We want to thank our customers. We’ve been very fortunate to have great customers.
With each real estate transaction comes the opportunity for a rewarding friendship. Driving around town, seeing this home or that property with which we helped the sellers or buyers is like seeing old friends and family. It always yields a warm feeling of friendship [...]
This Month in Real Estate
November 2009
Commentary
Budding signs of recovery continued last month. The encouraging news arrived in a number of closely followed economic indicators. On Thursday, October 29, the U.S. Commerce Department stated the country’s recession has officially ended, at least as leading data indicates.
U.S. GDP expanded 3.5 percent in the third quarter, the first period of quarterly growth [...]
One in 20 Americans say they plan to buy a home within the next year, and they’re most likely to be 34 years old or younger and living in the South or West, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Roughly a quarter of potential buyers said the No. 1 reason they would buy now is because [...]
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions on the changes to the Homebuyer Tax Credit
Question: Existing homeowner credit: Must the new house cost more than the old house?
Answer: No. Thus, for example, individuals who move from a high cost area to a lower cost area who meet all eligibility requirements will qualify for [...]
More than 100 arrested for mortgage fraud
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Nov. 4, 2009 - A federal prosecutor says a crackdown on organized mortgage fraud this year has yielded 105 arrests from Jacksonville to Fort Myers.
A. Brian Albritton, the U.S. attorney for Florida’s middle district, announced the results of the nine-month investigation at news conferences Tuesday [...]
Homebuyer tax credit best tool for sustaining housing recovery
WASHINGTON - Oct. 8, 2009 - The best tool for sustaining the still-fragile housing market is the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, and it’s essential that Congress extend the credit into 2010, the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) testified at a hearing of the U.S. House Small Business [...]
The IRS has released IR-2009-083 reporting that about 1.4 million taxpayers have filed (or amended) their 2008 income tax returns claiming the $8000 first-time homebuyer tax credit. This is roughly consistent with NAR’s projections that about 1.8 million taxpayers will claim the credit. NAR also estimates that at least 355,000 of eligible sales would not [...]
Economists: Extend the housing tax credit
WASHINGTON - Sept. 21, 2009 - More than 40 percent of all homebuyers in 2009 will qualify for the federal tax credit, costing the government about $15 billion - twice the original estimate - but most housing experts applaud the policy and favor expanding it.
Now the decision is up to [...]
RISMEDIA, September 8, 2009-House prices in the U.S. continued to depreciate in the second quarter 2009 but at a much more moderate rate compared to the fourth quarter 2008, the peak of the collapse in home prices, according to a quarterly housing valuation analysis by IHS Global Insight. Prices fell at a 2.7% annualized rate [...]
Make no bones about it, with respect to our real estate market, that was then and THIS is NOW. As with any commodity market, values change. In the grand scheme of things, real estate is just that, a commodity.
The underlying force affecting price is supply and demand. It really doesn’t matter what triggers it, it’s going [...]