Market Insights Blog

http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2011/11/belvedere.html  Check out this link to an excellent article from Charlottesville Tomorrow.  It has taken some time but Belvedere is becoming the neighborhood that was promised back in 2004.  

Listen to this podcast http://www.wina.com/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=5507677 and read this article http://pro.truliablog.com/buyers/better-mortgage-rates-start-with-better-fico-scores/.  Once you do, your answer will be "you bet"!

There are so many reasons why to visit Charlottesville in the Fall.  The weather is awesome, the changing colors of the leaves beautiful, and there are so many things to do.  Check out http://www.thefesty.com 

Since this article http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-east/toast-virginia-wine-country-00400000009565/ was written several micro breweries like http://www.starrhill.com  http://www.southstreetbrewery.com and http://www.bluemountainbrewery.com has been established as well.  When you come visit you will fall in love with this special place we call Charlottesville and when you do, our hope is you will call 434-951-5155 ext 158 or email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) so we can find you a home. 

I woke up to the headline in the http://www.dailyprogress.com saying "Local housing market called 6th best in U.S."  You can see the article by cutting and pasting this link http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2011/oct/01/report-charlottesville-has-one-nations-best-housin-ar-1351715/ to in your url field.  I must admit this information caught me by surprise.  My initial thought was "if we have the 6th best housing market in the US", the rest of the country is in a whole lot of trouble.  Why, because, in my opinion, we are still not even in a recovery stage of what has been now a 6 year downturn.  There are certainly signs that we may very well be bumping along the bottom but what that means is there are homes that are now selling while others sit on the market.  The reason; there are still almost 3500 homes on the market representing over 15 months of inventory.  The average sales price for homes sold in September was the lowest it has been since March of 2011. We live in a great part of this country.  Charlottesville, VA and The University of Virginia http://www.virginia.edu are regularly and consistently ranked amongs the nations very best places to live and go to school.  What does all this mean?  We are not even close to coming out of this challenging real estate market.  Sellers still need to be very aggressive with their pricing and have their homes in good condition.  The good news is that when a home is well priced and in good condition, there are buyers waiting to buy them. 

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2011/sep/20/yahoo-real-estate-charlottesville-best-place-live-ar-1324519/ Yahoo's survey notes Charlottesville and the surrounding counties' beautiful landscape, low unemployment, and wonderful amenities as reasons why it rated this area #1.  I would also add the amazing giving spirit as evidenced by todays United Way  http://www.dayorcaring.org and the announcement that The Dave matthews Band and CACF will each give $50,000 to help the earthquake relief efforts in Loisa County, VA http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2011/sep/20/dmb-cacf-give-quake-aid-ar-1324756/

I sent a Facebook message http://www.facebook.com/mguthrie7 and Twitter mrg7175 message out this morning sharing the news that RealtyTrac released data saying August Foreclosures increased by 7% over July.  They also shared what could have been encouraging news that the foreclosures were 33% less than August of 2010.  This news is unfortunately tempered by the fact that the dip can be explained by the robosigning problems lenders faced this time last year.  Here is a link to the Keeping Current Matters blog site http://kcmblog.com/2011/09/06/5-great-reasons-to-sell-your-house-today-2/ that says that the increase of foreclosures along with other factors says that now very well be the time to sell.  As always, this information may or may not pertain to your part of the country but you owe it to yourself to find a real estate professional you trust to find out how this information will impact you and the home you are trying to sell.

I had a chance to chat with the Mortgage Bankers Association's President and CEO, David H Stevens on the radio show found on http://www.facebook.com/realestatematters Saturday.  You can hear his comments and interesting insights by clicking on this link. http://www.wina.com/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=5445720  If you are thinking mortgages and interest rates will continue to improve, you need to listen to what David says.  Bottom line, these challenging times are not over and won't be for some time to come. 

In our last post, we discussed what the raising of the debt ceiling would mean to interest rates and the real estate market.  This post originated from a conversation (http://www.facebook.com/realestatematters) we had with UVa Professor Ed Burton on what it all really meant.  I found it interesting that Professor Burton shared that the real problem with the debt ceiling and the downgrading of our country's credit is that the government isn't really doing anything to reduce the deficit.  Last week I saw an interesting analysis that brought this point home in the simplest of ways.  Check it out *numbers come from Hailey, McNamara, Hall, Larmann and Papale, llp and if accurate make an interesting point.

US income $2,170,000,000,000

Federal Budget $3,820,000,000,000

New Debt $1,650,000,000,000

National Debt $14,271,000,000,000

Recent Budget Cut $38,500,000,000 or about 1% of the budget

Sounds like a great deal until you remove 8 zeros and pretend this represents a household budget

Total Income for ficticious family $21,700

Amount of money family spent $38,200

Amount of new debt added to credit card $16,500

Outstanding debt on credit card $142,710

Amount the family cut to help make ends meet $385

Needless to say, this cut will not make a dent in the family debt.

When we talk in trillions it is so easy for our eyes to glaze over and not understand what is really heppening.  When we reduce the amount of zeros we see that very little is being done to reduce our debt and until that happens, economic recovery will be a long time coming.

Roy Wheeler Realty Company CEO and Principal Broker was on a local radio show discusing what the raised debt ceiling would mean to real estate.  Here is a podcast of his comments on http://www.wina.com 's Charlottesville Right Now http://www.wina.com/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&audioId=5408713

Check out this blog post which mentions The Lodge that is coming to Old Trail.  http://lodgeatoldtrail.com/blog/  Once you read the blog you can also click on the podcast which discusses this new community and all its amenities as well as what is happening these days in http://www.oldtrailvillage.com