With so many thoughts and commentary on the real estate market in America, I want to know what you think. We hear reports daily on CNN, Headline News, Fox News, AJC, Money.com and so many others, but what is it really like out there? Where I work I find that there are a variety of great options out there, but there are also some really bad ones. Navigating this sea of information can often be a tricky.
Also, what about all these web sites that innundate us with information. My experience has been that about 30-40% of that data is actually current and for the average consumer to dissiminate it all is next to impossible. Shoot, I often find that figuring out which is good and which are bad can be a huge task: and I have been at this for years.
We hear so many things said about incentives and programs that are now out there, but also hear that it is often difficult to even qualify for a home these days.
Please let us know what you think and share any experiences you might have had. We all need to learn how to make this a better country and return the real estate market to the best way to gain wealth in America once again. Thanks for your commentary both negative and positive. It is all a great help!

Bru Krebs
Broker
Prime Real Estate
www.atlprime.com

Today the stock market is mostly flat in reaction to today’s real estate news. According to Smart Money in an article dated Augst 26, 2009: “New home sales for July climbed 9.6% from the previous month, with an estimated 433,000 sales. Economists expected a 4% increase and new-home sales of 395,000 for the month. ”
What does this mean for you? It means the best time to buy is now to take advantage of the best prices, interest rates and incentives before things change.
Call your Prime Real Estate Agent for details at 404-685-3774 or visit our web site at www.atlprime.com.

According to the associated press in an article dated August 25, 2009: Consumer sentiment rose in august beating expectations. Is this an indication that consumers are becoming more confident in the spending and futures?
In that same article it is indicated that national home prices rose for the first time in three years.
While the indicators are still far below that of a healthy economy, there is promise of a brighter outlook.
Some economists expect a growth of about 2% in the next quarter. Hopes are for stronger consumer spending for the recovery to keep from fizzling.
Don’t forget the Home buyer tax credits end December 1, 2009, so call your Prime Real Estate Sales Associate for more information at 404-685-3774.

Fed Extends TALF, Says Credit Markets Still ‘Impaired’
FEDERAL RESERVE, FED, TALF, ECONOMY, TREASURY DEPARTMENT
CNBC.com | 17 Aug 2009 | 09:38 AM ET
The Federal Reserve said Monday it will extend its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility another six months though it said conditions were improving in some areas.

In a joint announcement with the Treasury Department, the central bank said the TALF, as the program is known, now will run until June 2010, from its original cutoff date of December 2009.

“Conditions in financial markets have improved considerably in recent months,” the Fed and Treasury said in their statement. “Nonetheless, the markets for asset-backed securities backed by consumer and business loans and for commercial mortgage-backed securities are still impaired and seem likely to remain so for some time.”

The extension will cover newly issued commercial mortgage-backed securities but will not be expanded to cover assets not already eligible.

The program targets primarily students loans and credit cards but extends to other financing as well.

The TALF started in March and figures prominently in efforts by the Fed and the Obama administration to ease credit, stabilize the financial system and help end the recession.

Under the program, investors use the funds to buy securities backed by auto and student loans, credit cards, business equipment and loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration.

The program has the potential to generate up to $1 trillion in lending for households and businesses, according to the government. Spurring such lending is vital to turning around the economy. The Fed and Treasury said they were prepared to reconsider this decision if financial or economic developments conditions indicate that such an expansion would still be warranted. However, the government believes the financial system is beginning to stabilize after being hit last fall by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed and the Treasury also extended TALF through March 31 for newly issued asset-backed securities and already-issued, or “legacy,” commercial mortgage-backed securities.

—Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2009 CNBC.com
URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/32446222/

August 14, 2009

Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Maria Saporta Contributing Writer
Joann VItelli
72 Marietta Street: AJC’s current home is “a critical piece of real estate,” says Central Atlanta Progress’ A.J. Robinson.
View Larger

The possible move of Atlanta’s largest daily newspaper out of downtown concerns civic leaders and one of the city’s most accomplished journalists.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been laying the groundwork to move from its current downtown home to a location that likely will be outside the city limits. Atlanta Business Chronicle first reported the possible move Aug. 12.

“It would be a very sad day for the community, after so many generations, to physically lose such an important part of the fabric of Atlanta,” said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a downtown business group.

Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, said major daily newspapers have played a vital role in helping create the civic, business and cultural life of cities.

“We have seen other major metro newspapers suffer so this is nothing new,” Williams said. “But it strikes to the heart of Atlanta because reporting on the public sector on a daily basis, especially investigative reporting, is crucial to good government.”

The AJC’s roots downtown date back more than a century. Throughout its history, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution have produced some of the city’s leading citizens, beginning with editor Henry Grady’s vision for the New South in the late 1880s to “Gone With The Wind” author Margaret Mitchell to editor Ralph McGill and columnists Celestine Sibley and Lewis Grizzard.

As a testament to his role in the city, Grady’s statue stands proudly in the middle of Marietta Street just a block away from the newspaper’s building.

If the AJC does move out of the city, “I can see Henry Grady holding a handkerchief to his eyes,” said George Goodwin, 92, who won the Atlanta Journal’s first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for exposing voter fraud in Telfair County.

AJC executives have been letting community leaders and employees know about the possible move, telling them that decision should be announced later this month. The AJC’s new publisher, Michael Joseph, informed employees in an Aug. 3 e-mail about a possible relocation.

“We have been exploring all the options to lower our cost structure, including real estate,” said Jennifer Morrow, the AJC’s external communications manager. “We are looking at a lot of options related to real estate opportunities.”

She added that a decision likely will be announced within a couple of weeks.

The AJC’s parent, Cox Enterprises Inc., made a similar move in Dayton, Ohio, in 2007, when it moved the headquarters of the Dayton Daily News out of downtown Dayton.

That decision was met with disappointment from Dayton economic development groups, including the Downtown Dayton Partnership.

Cox’s Doug Franklin, who until recently was publisher of the AJC, was formerly publisher of Cox Ohio Publishing, where he was involved in the 2006 decision to move the Dayton Daily News outside of downtown Dayton.

Even though the problems of the newspaper industry are well-known, CAP’s Robinson wondered how moving the AJC from the city would put it in a better position to cover Atlanta, especially “when the major institutions and the leaders who create or shape the news are in the central city.”

But Robinson said that although it would be a great disappointment, the AJC moving would “not be a death knell” for downtown. “It’s not the end of the world for us,” Robinson said. “We will go on about our business of building a great downtown.”

Actually, Robinson said the AJC’s current home at 72 Marietta St. is “a critical piece of real estate.” It is a strategic site for the redevelopment of Marietta Street and the railroad gulch that is part of the proposed “green line” project and a new multimodal train station.

Retired journalist Goodwin remembered the 20 years that he worked for the Atlanta Journal right after World War II.

“I have difficulty imagining our major newspaper being anywhere else but the heart of Atlanta,” said Goodwin, who after leaving the Atlanta Journal became the dean of the city’s public relations professionals. “Atlanta is a particularly large circle. And if you are a circular city, you’ve got to be located in the middle.”

CAP’s Robinson said he knows newspapers are in transition and that the industry is struggling. “When faced with questions of survival, institutions make radical decisions,” said Robinson, who hopes the Atlanta community will try to get the AJC to reconsider its plans before a final decision is announced.

Goodwin still has a hard time believing the AJC could leave the central city. “It’s a very negative thing. Somebody in civic Atlanta needs to say … ‘You can’t do this.’ ”

Reach Saporta at (404) 736-3612 or maria@saporta.biz.

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/08/17/story2.html?b=1250481600^1932931

By Julie Haviv

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An unusually robust rise in home prices from April to May could foreshadow a recovery in many U.S. housing markets, according to a report released on Thursday by Radar Logic, a real estate data and analytics company.

Twenty-two out of 25 metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, displayed month-over-month price increases in May, according to Radar Logic’s RPX Monthly Housing Market Report for May 2009.

The RPX 25-MSA Composite showed a month-over-month increase of 2.1 percent.

“This is in stark contrast to the same period during 2008, when a decrease in the velocity of home price depreciation gave way to the worst loss in housing value in recent history,” the report said.

Prices have fallen 33.5 percent peak-to-trough and 31 percent peak-to-current, according to the RPX 25-MSA Composite.

Radar Logic said the RPX is designed to be a daily indication of the “spot” price for residential real estate, which perhaps provides an early view of trends in the broader economy.

“We have been observing strength in the RPX since April, and it now appears that this improvement in home prices was an early indicator of some strength in the general economy,” the report said.

San Francisco ranked No. 1 in May, in terms of price gains, prices surging 7.3 percent versus April. Minneapolis and Milwaukee ranked second and third, with prices climbing 5.5 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, in May versus April, the data showed.

“Prices in most of these MSAs increased more than would be expected, given historical seasonal patterns,” the report said. “This contrasts starkly to the month-over-month price changes in May 2008, when the seasonal strength typically observable in spring and summer was largely absent.”

Radar Logic said the larger-than-average increase in home prices from April to May 2009 could indicate that seasonal price fluctuations do not fully account for the strength seen in many areas and that seasonal gains are being augmented by a more general recovery in the housing market.

“Unusually mild price declines in the coming autumn and winter would provide further evidence that some markets have started to recover,” the report said.

BIG CITY BLUES

Atlanta, Las Vegas and New York — in contrast to the price growth displayed by most of the MSAs tracked — declined on a month-over-month basis in May, dropping 0.2 percent, 0.6 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively, the data showed.

Radar Logic said the price declines in New York and Las Vegas were not surprising, due to their economies’ reliance on industries that have been hit hard during the recession.

The company also said the absence of seasonal strength in Atlanta was not unusual, either, as seasonal factors do not have a particularly strong influence on the Atlanta RPX relative to the influence of seasonality on other MSAs.

The RPX 25-MSA Composite has increased 3.7 percent since March 30, when it hit its lowest point since the beginning of the housing crisis. Home prices in the western region of the United States have performed particularly well recently, increasing by 6.9 percent since hitting their low on January 22, the report said.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

By ALAN ZIBEL

The Associated Press

7:31 a.m. Thursday, August 13, 2009

WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes rose 7 percent from June to July, as the escalating foreclosure crisis continued to outpace government efforts to limit the damage.

Foreclosure filings were up 32 percent from the same month last year, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. More than 360,000 households, or one in every 355 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, such as a notice of default or trustee’s sale. That’s the highest monthly level since the foreclosure-listing firm began publishing the data more than four years ago.

Banks repossessed more than 87,000 homes in July, up from about 79,000 homes a month earlier.

Nevada had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate for the 31st-straight month, followed by California, Arizona, Florida and Utah. Rounding out the top 10 were Idaho, Georgia, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon. Among cities, Las Vegas had the highest rate, followed by the California cities of Stockton and Modesto.

While there have been numerous recent signs that the ailing U.S. housing market is finally stabilizing after three years of plunging prices, foreclosures remain a big concern. Foreclosures are typically sold at a deep discount, hurting neighbors’ home values.

The mortgage industry has been slow to adapt to the surge in foreclosures. Many lenders have needed government prodding to get up to speed with the Obama administration’s plan to stem foreclosures.

The Treasury Department said last week that banks have extended only 400,000 offers to 2.7 million eligible borrowers who are more than two months behind on their payments. More than 235,000, or 9 percent, those borrowers have enrolledin three-month trials in which their monthly payments are reduced.

“The volume of loans that are in distress simply overwhelms” those efforts, said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president for marketing.

___

August 13, 2009 07:31 AM EDT

Statistics are now showing that both the real estate and stock markets appear to have hit bottom.  This is indicated by two months of upticks in indicators after many months of down-ticks in both arenas.  This is great news for Atlanta real estate buyers and sellers.  Interest rates are at all time lows making purchase power very strong.  

For Seller, inventories have dropped, so competition has lessened.  Your buyers are now able to purchase more home at a lower cost.  The market season now in spring is headed into the best time to be out there for buyers.  In short, there has never been a better time to have a PRIME agent list your home.  Contact a specialist today to get out there at just the right time.  Now that tax season is over and we are entering the ’school’s out’ summer selling season, more buyers will be out looking to make that move.  Selling your home while inventories are low makes sure that your home has the best opportunity to be seen and purchased. 

For buyers, interest rates are low and prices are competitive.  The Atlanta real estate market was never over valued like so much of the country and represents an excellent opportunity for home ownership and wealth building.  Atlanta is unique in have a fantastic cost of living factor, incredible economic base and continual economic growth and leadership.  With its central hub nature and low cost of living, Atlanta is a very attractive city for new industry.  Buying in Atlanta today could be like buying in New York in the 80s.  The opportunity for growth is uncharted.

Buying or selling today in Atlanta is a win win.  Contact your top real estate professionals at PRIME REAL ESTATE in Midtown Atlanta.  (404) 685-3774, www.atlprime.com.