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The end of the year numbers pretty much substantiated everything Roy Wheeler Realty Company has been saying all year.  If you have followed the market over this past year, you know that it looked very bleak due to the miserable last quarter of 2008 but slowly but surely improved throughout the year.  Given that improvement, 2009 finished equal to the home sale numbers of 2008.  The last quarter of 2009 far outpaced the same time period in 2008 with Albemarle and Greene Counties leading the way.   Because of that, look for the 1st quarter market report of 2010 to show a vast improvement over the 1st quarter of last year. Should that happen, one would think and we would hope it would provide momentum which would mean the beginning of a rebound in the local real estate market.  Continued low interest rates, Uncle Sam's tax credit and realistically priced homes should draw buyers into the market place meaning the 2nd quarter sold data will also show improvement.  The wild card in all this is Charlottesville and the surrounding Central Virginia counties still have too much inventory (described as homes for sale) and that doesn't seem to be changing much.  Until the number of homes (both new and resale) decrease by almost 50%, we can't expect for our real estate market to rebound from what has now been a 4 year downturn.