The Housing Market is not dead!

Well, yesterday we closed on the sale of our old house so we are happily the proud owners of not two but just one house again. It also seems that the one house down the street from our old house is now being leased and two more houses a few blocks away are now under contract. So all the stories you may hear about the housing market being dead are highly exaggerated. One thing to note about all of the local houses I mentioned, however, is that all of those houses were listed for under $250,000. It is definitely the lower end of the market in the nicer, more stable neighborhoods that will see the most sales volume right now, especially ones that would appeal to first time buyers who can take advantage of the $8,000 federal tax credit. I know in the area where we live now where most homes are over $300,000 the houses seem to move a bit slower, although some are still selling. Our agent, Mary Cella, actually has two listings over $300K which have been listed for a looong time, both in top school districts (within 1 mile from our house) and in reasonable condition. Her lower priced listings seem to be doing better, like our old house!

We are now looking to refinance the mortgage on our house now that we can pay our loan down quite a bit with the proceeds from our sale, and I will have to say the lenders sound like they are pretty busy. The two lenders we considered were First Community Credit Union and Schwab Bank where we have our current 3 year ARM. Both told me a current 5 to 6 week wait until closing, and similar low rates at or under 5% on most conventional fixed loans. I still remember getting a 9.25% loan back in 1991 on our house then and how excited we were to later refinance to 7.75%. First time buyers now do not realize the deal they are getting with these fixed rate loans around 5%. Look at the trends over the years and you will realize how incredibly low today's rates are by historical standards.