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YES…ABSOLUTELY…The list of things that can impact the housing market is long and sometimes exhausting, much like the campaign politics in a presidential election year. For as long as I have been a REALTOR®, the negative impact of a Presidential Election year has been a fact of life in real estate. Because t. ...

DO YOU SPEAK REALTOR?

I recently used the term HELOC while visiting with a client and he replied, “I don’t speak REALTOR, please explain in English”.  This reminded me of a Real Estate Marketing class several years ago where the instructor handed out newspaper clippings with Real Estate Ads and asked everyone to read and interpret.  Do you know what this says?

 “3br/2ba w J&J, WBFP, great AMEN, WOW in PUD w/ EIK, FROG, FDR, IGSP and CAC priced at $399,000, WLL”. 

Don’t feel bad, neither did I.  By the end of class we were all extremely confused, laughing not only at the ads but at ourselves because we have all been guilty of this.  Abbreviations and Acronyms are a necessary evil in our industry and Real Estate Terminology can be very confusing sometimes.  Space limitations in the MLS and Websites force us to find ways to fit as much information as possible into 450 characters, or less, and that can be ...

Unemployment Report: No Need to Be Terrified


Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its latest jobs report. It revealed that the economic shutdown made necessary by COVID-19 caused the unemployment rate to jump to 14.7%. Many anticipate that next month the percentage could be even higher. These numbers represent the extreme hardship so many families are experiencing right now. That pain should not be understated.
However, the long-term toll the pandemic will cause should not be overstated either. There have been numerous headlines claiming the current disruption in the economy is akin to the Great Depression, and many of those articles are calling for total Armageddon. Some experts are stepping up to refute those claims.
In a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article this past weekend, Josh Zumbrun, a national economics correspondent for the Journal explained:
“News stories often describe the coronavirus-induced global economic downturn as the worst since th ...

 

With the housing market staggered to some degree by the health crisis the country is currently facing, some potential purchasers are questioning whether home values will be impacted. The price of any item is determined by supply as well as the market’s demand for that item.
Each month the National Association of Realtors (NAR) surveys “over 50,000 real estate practitioners about their expectations for home sales, prices and market conditions” for the REALTORS Confidence Index.
Their latest edition sheds some light on the relationship between seller traffic (supply) and buyer traffic (demand) during this pandemic.
Buyer Demand
The map below was created after asking the question: “How would you rate buyer traffic in your area?”
The darker the blue, the stronger the demand for homes is in that area. The survey shows that in 34 of the 50 U.S. states, buyer demand is now ‘strong’ and 16 of the 50 states have a ‘stable’ dem ...