News & Stats

If you are considering buying a home today, you are probably getting a ton of advice. Some of that advice is through news mediums, which will bring you a mixed bag of positive and negative feedback: foreclosure and short sale nightmares, low interest rates, and mortgage guideline changes. Another array of opinions are coming from your family and friends, which are more than likely based on their own real estate experiences, whether good or bad. You need to take a deep breath, stop the background noise, and answer the following three questions for yourself to determine whether or not you should purchase a home:

1.  What exactly are the experts saying?
I encourage you to conduct your own research choosing qualified experts, but in the last 150 days many…

NAR released its latest pending home sales index figure last week and for the second month in a row the index is up. But more than that, the index has broken 100. This is significant because the only time since the housing boom collapsed that the index has broken 100 is when the home owner tax credit was in effect. The fact that the index has returned to that level a year since the credit has been in effect means the housing market is strengthening completely on its own, without any stimulus.

NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun is upbeat about 2012 because in a number of areas indicators are pointing upward. Not only are home sales up but housing starts are up and home prices are…

Saw this article in my RSS feed reader from Inman News on the state of real estate nationally. It certainly is GOOD to hear something like this. Our local market continues to rebound, albeit slowly. Nonetheless, as more positive news makes it out into the media the more comfortable buyers will be which is a good thing for everyone.

Enjoy!

Stephanie

By Inman News™

At a glance: Existing-home sales (September 2011):

"While a 5.0 to 5.2 million SAAR unit existing home sales for April 2011, which is the expected range among economists, would represent a 10% to 14% decline from 2010 activity, the April and May unit home sales trend would continue the monthly sequential average gain we have seen since the end of the 2010 tax credit impact," said Realogy president and CEO Richard A. Smith. "Because the impact of the Homebuyer Tax Credit peaked in the second quarter of 2010, we expected to see a year-over-year decline in home sale transactions in the second quarter of 2011 both at Realogy and in the housing market in general. We believe the fact that our average sales prices are holding steady compared to last year is a strong positive."

Smith continued, "We…