I am happy to report that things are picking up here in the Valley of the Sun. (For those of you who are not familiar with this term — I am talking about the greater Phoenix area.)

Contrary to what I hear on the news and from what I read in the newspaper, the real estate market is getting better. When I ran the numbers I noticed that we sold more homes in May 2008 than the same time last year. To me this is a positive sign that buyers are less wary to buy now than they were last year. Also, the inventory of homes for sale has been decreasing steadily for a few months now.

While the numbers were not as high as they were during the housing boom, they are still acceptable. I believe that this should be the benchmark for how we measure home sales today. If we continue to compare current homes sales to those sold during the boom we will continue

Continue reading "Things are Looking Up!" »

Posted on June 10 at 11:30 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (1)

I am not a political person by nature and I am very careful to stay off the front-lines, thanks to my real estate career.

Why? It is simple. I don’t want to be seen as a “single-party” practitioner … I want to sell homes to Democrats, Republicans, and even Whigs.

But when it comes to protecting my profession, I’m meaner than a mama bear protecting her cubs. Why? Because when Uncle Sam and his friends get involved in real estate there is usually only one result: less cash in my pocket.

That’s why I take it as a matter of personal pride that I serve as a State Director for the Delaware County Board of REALTORS® and as the REALTOR® Political Action Committee chairperson for the same board.

I was recently appalled to learn that less than 6 percent of Ohio’s real estate practitioners with a NRDS ID responded to a recent call to action from NAR. Now I don’t expect every REALTOR® to respond or even agree with the call to action. But that doesn't account for only having SIX percent respond – that’s called apathy and it is the biggest challenge to democracy’s – and real estate's -- future.

Why should YPN readers care? Because these “call to actions” are shaping the future climate

Continue reading "Step Up and Protect Your Profession" »

Posted on June 6 at 09:39 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (0)

What came first … the chicken or the egg? This age-old conundrum can be applied to the current housing market. According to the “experts,” the housing market should turn around by sometime in 2009 but could possibly turn around sometime in 2008.

Here’s my take on the market:

So what is it going to take for the housing market to start its recovery? The Fed has been aggressively cutting rates, but the impact has been minimal on the housing market. Since mortgage rates are not directly tied to rate cuts, it’s understandable that these rate cuts would not do much to bring a faster recovery to the housing market.

What about the economic stimulus plan? Won’t raising the limits on FHA loans and jumbo loans help spur a housing market recovery? It might, but, in my opinion, it is only a partial solution. The problem is that financial incentives are only helpful if they are actually taken

Continue reading "My Thoughts on the Road to Recovery for the Housing Market" »

Posted on March 12 at 09:07 AM | Permanent Link | Add a Comment (1)