Keep this in mind! Me working as your Official Buyer’s Agent is a FREE SERVICE, protecting your best interest. If you call an agent direct off the sign in the front of the home, you are calling the agent that represents the seller. By contract, they are bound to represent their seller against your best interests.

With this in mind, call me to set up ALL appointments including a for sale by owner you may run across on your next Sunday drive. If you call the agent on the sign, that agent is not going to look out for you, but only the seller, who they have a contractual agreement with. I am just a phone call or email away and my service costs you nothing. All commissions are paid by the seller, not the buyer. So give me a call or send me an email when you are ready to start viewing listings.

I hope to hear from you soon!

The Fed has cut the Federal Funds Rate again.

In a brief statement explaining their decision, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues said that “financial markets remain under considerable stress.”

The Fed move was approved on a 9 to 1 vote. Richard Fisher, president of the Fed’s Dallas regional bank, dissented, preferring no change in rates.

The rate cut marked the fifth time that the Fed has cut the funds rate since it started with a half-point cut on Sept. 18 in response to the severe credit crisis which hit global markets in August.

Read the whole article.

This is good news folks for home buyers. Time to buy!

It’s been 25 years since Bear Bryant died. Having grown up in Alabama, I can’t think of any historical figure more important than Coach Bryant. I was 13 years old when he died and I remember that time very well. He always said that if he ever quit coaching, he’d “croak in a month”, and he did pass away a little over a month after his last game. I remember the outpouring of grief across the state. Cars were lined up and down the interstate and people were hanging over the overpasses to get one last glimpse of the legendary coach as the 300 car long procession made it’s way from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham.

When I was a young boy, my walls were covered with Bear Bryant quotes like “If you believe in yourself, and have dedication and pride, and never quit, you can be a winner. The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards.” Alabama’s teams, fully integrated during the seventies, not only dominated the decade, but they played and won with class. Everybody loved the Bear, it seemed. He was truly a larger than life figure and he was ours.

He was a source of pride for a state that was dragged through the mud by Governor Wallace. Alabama had a low self-esteem due to the Civil Rights era and the much deserved negative coverage that it received during and after that time. But Bear Bryant and the Alabama football team gave the state something to be proud of. Of course the Bear was nothing like Governor Wallace, the other well known Alabamian. In order to push integration of the football team, he purposefully arranged a game between his all white Alabama team and an integrated USC team, knowing that he would lose, and lose he did. In front of the Bama crowd at Legion Field, running back Sam Cunningham and the Trojans ran all over the Tide. Assistant coach Jerry Claiborne would later say that “Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 60 miniutes than Martin Luther King did in 20 years.”

An integrated Alabama Crimson Tide was unstoppable in the seventies. They won three national championships and were in contention for one just about every year.

We still talk about Coach Bryant in Alabama, but can you blame us? He was truly the greatest.

Here is a great article from the Birmingham News about Coach Bryant.
More from the Tide Druid.
Also, be sure to read this.

Kathy Tyson, a fellow Realtor and good friend, and also the Real Estate editor at Music City Bloggers, makes the point that the media often forgets “all real estate is local”.

With today’s real estate market, we hear over and over and over and over and over a lot about how the housing bubble has burst. Ironically, real estate agents in Middle Tennessee don’t necessarily agree with that national assessment. The national media like to ignore the fact that all real estate is local. Just because home sales in California, Nevada and Florida have tanked, it doesn’t mean that all markets have fallen apart

She goes on to point out that last year was the fourth best year ever in the greater Nashville market, which of course includes Kingston Springs. Don’t believe everything you read or see on the news folks.

Here is a great website I found called the Housing Predictor. They are predicting more good news for the Nashville area, which of course, includes Kingston Springs.

In Nashville the housing market boomed for at least three years, one of the longest in the country as newcomers moved to the country music capital. But home sales have been cut by a third as a result of national fall out from the credit crunch. However, the median price of a home is at an historic high of nearly $180,000.

Baby boomers and retirees moving to Nashville have demanded more amenities and as a consequence home prices have risen, while other areas of the country have seen prices fall. But the increasing inventory of homes on the market will impact the market place later in 2008, according to the Housing Predictor forecast.

A growing reputation as being business friendly has sent the job market upward with unemployment under 4.5%, which will keep the Nashville housing market healthy, especially compared to the majority of the country. Nashville will see appreciation forecast by Housing Predictor at 1.8% in 2008. Many people, including retirees are moving to Tennessee for lower taxes and a better quality of life.

I really get tired of all of the negative news out there about the so called housing market. There is too much fear out there and the media is to blame. The Nashville market is still good folks.

Last year’s official data for this market can be found here.

Mark J. Perry is linking to this Wall Street Journal article and offers the following analysis.

If there’s a bright spot in the housing market, it might be that the “Months supply of homes at the current sales rate” declined in November and December, after increasing for nine consecutive months (see chart above), suggesting an improving balance between the supply of home available for sale and the demand from homebuyers.

When those levels are through leveling off, prices are going to go up. By then you will have missed out on the bargains in the buyers market. NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY! Rates are low. Contact me.

Here is a related post about a reduction in housing starts.

If all of this talk of “fiscal stimulus” and “monetary stimulus” has you a little confused, I reccomend you read this from Jim Voorhies. He breaks things down pretty well.

By the way, of the two schools of thought in economics, I most definitely consider myself to be a monetarist, a fan of Milton Friedman.

This article is really long, but what it is basically saying is that with low interest rates, there is a resurgence in mortgage lending, but this resurgence will not include everybody. So the question is, who benefits?

The big winners will be conventional borrowers with so-called conforming loans — those eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored entities that rule the mortgage market.

Translation- first time buyers benefit. So if you presently rent, not only will you be buying a home in this market for a lower price, but you will be getting a lower interest rate on your loan. Lenders aren’t afraid of you because the government backs those loans. Now is the time to buy if you are a first time buyer, not later.

More on the advantages of home ownership here.

MSNBC.com has an article that lists eleven easy ways to boost your house’s curb appeal in one weekend.

1. Paint or stain your front door.

2. Polish door hardware.

3. Replace worn welcome mats.

4. Install outdoor lighting.

5. Kill mold and mildew.

6. Mow the lawn.

7. Get rid of weeds.

8. Trim shrubs and tree branches.

9. Add a hanging flower basket.

10. Clean gutters.

11. Clean windows.

More on curb appeal here.

Jessica from the Inman News Blog has written an outstanding post on what people call the “housing market”. Here is a snippet, but I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

At the end of the day, though, people are still buying and selling homes. Marriage, divorce, babies, new jobs — all of the usual suspects which tend to trigger a home sale or purchase are still part of people’s lives. We’re just not seeing sellers who don’t need to move right now selling and buyers who can’t afford buying.

In my opinion, we have more of a credit problem than a housing problem (again, at the national level). Those markets hit particularly hard by foreclosures right now definitely have a housing problem and it will take some time and critical leadership to get these cities back on track. But so far, at the national level, the damage from this correction resides mostly in credit markets.

Exactly. Markets are cyclical and we are presently on the end of the business cycle. As she stated, there really isn’t a housing problem, but a credit problem that affects housing. It is all going to iron itself out in the end, but in the meantime the market still isn’t that bad, and when I say market I mean the Nashville market. Some markets are seeing some major changes, but that isn’t a crisis, its a correction. Calm down folks. The good times are still with us.