Happy New Year and a Very Prosperous One

It will be interesting, I'm sure when we look back a year from now and see where we went and how many turns we took getting there.

Lets all hope that we get the banks to loosen up some money for credible, eligible people to get loans. We are at a 37 year low for interest rates. That's a great way to start off 2009. All we need is the banks to give up the money so we can take advantage of these rates. First time homeowners have a wonderful opportunity here and Realtors have to be searching out that client base that went on the back burner November 1 when the ability to use down payment assistance went away along with the strict lending guidelines that stayed constant. I bet those lists are coming out of files and being checked twice. Low interest, low prices and still be able to get seller assistance on closing costs just not down payment could produce some very positive results. As we all know a little movement at the lower level and it all moves.
Happy New Year

Current Real Estate Market Supply Phoenix AZ

Below are the stats for the past couple of weeks. It never ceases to amaze me why the newspapers and media can't tell this story. It is noteworthy considering what the state of affairs has been for the past couple of years. There are buyers out there and quite a few, we now need loans that make some sense for that consumer. We bail out the banks to get it moving and the bank hangs on to our money and does nothing perform as was the intention. Take a look at these stats supplied by Karl

Karl Stauffer's Weekly Market Update
Weekly Inventory Level Comparison
©2008 Karl Stauffer
As of Friday, November 14th, 2008

There was another 1% increase in inventory this week but a higher closing rate gave us a net result of 9 1/4 months of supply, an improvement over last week.

For the sake of comparison, let's go back one year to this same week in 2007. We had 47640 homes for sale compared to 45302 this year which means supply has stayed fairly constant and in fact has come down about 5%. Last year we had 2815 closes in the month previous compared to this years 4897, an improvement of almost 75%!

There was an inventory supply of 17 months, nearly double what it is today.

I feel that the long term trends show we are improving even though that is not what you read in the papers. We need to get the word out!!!!!

Give us some loans we can use and watch decrease this inventory that much more and put the real estate market where it needs to be to get to the starting gate.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving
Maureen