The real estate blog.

CNN Money reported the top 10 cities in the country to appreciate in 2007. Salt Lake ranked number one in median price and number four in appreciation. Topping the list was McAllen, Texas, followed by El Paso and Albuqurque. In fact, of the top 100 markets, 63 are forcast to rise. Of the 37 markets that have a predicted decline, none of them have double digit losses.

You can find all the key statistics about Salt Lake City here. For my take on three Salt Lake zip codes worth buying in, see my post at 3Oceans blog.

The blogosphere is buzzing about Casey Serin. After his trip to Phoenix for real estate school, he hasn’t posted or moderated any comments for some time.

Keith at Housing Panic is concerned. After all, he’s “rooting for this kid.”

Honestly, I’m a little worried. I checked my email this morning and had comments questioning Casey’s welfare. I figured he was just tired from his trip, possibly a little depressed. I sent an email earlier today to check in with him - no response. Then I noticed his site had gone down for a while. His ablebuyer site was still active though. Later on, I got an email from a “concerned web citizen” -

I’ve been following Casey’s blog for a little over three months. I see he’s not done any moderating or posting in almost 48 hours. You seem to have a good relationship with him. Is everything okay? I’m concerned he may be in trouble. Could you please reassure me all is well for him?
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Wow! It’s been an exciting week before Christmas. First of all, the real estate blogosphere exchanged gifts during the Yankee Blog Swap. It was great because it put many real estate bloggers on each other’s radar.

Even though he wasn’t participating, Derek Burress made a great summary post of all 28 bloggers. He even decided to judge the head to head bloggers, even though we weren’t competing - we were just exchanging. Anyway, his summaries were good. Hopefully he’ll get invited to the next Yankee Blog Swap.

Thanks again to Pat Kitano at Transparent Real Estate for inviting me and Mary McKnight for setting the whole thing up. Thanks also to Kevin Boer for making a great post about the relationship between mortgage brokers and realtors. I think far too many people are suspect
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One of the things I love about FHA loans is the low downpayment requirement - only 3%. But, with that great feature comes a great cost - mortgage insurance. With FHA loans, an upfront premium is also charged, but that can be rolled into your loan. To keep up the insurance, a premium is tacked onto the monthly mortgage payment.

Mortgage insurance premiums protect the lender for 20% of the loan amount in case the borrower defaults. In turn, these insurance companies sell off large portions of this risk to other insurers, typically in Europe. This process of selling risk is called re-insurance. All insurance companies do this by the way.

FHA loans are not the only loans that charge mortgage insurance. If you don’t put down 20% on a purchase you, or your lender will have to
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I have been lucky enough to be president of our local Association of Realtors this year. This year has been tough on many levels. This was certainly the year of change at KGVAR.

I’m going to write up a lengthy blog article once the year wraps up to cover the highlights… and the not so highlights.

Today though, I took the biggest risk with the Membership. Earlier this week I rolled out the requirements for production awards. To my knowledge our Association is one of the last remaining Realtor groups that gives out some kind of production acknowledgment in the form of an award at an annual banquet. One of our neighboring Associations also continues to reward and recognize Members for outstanding performance. This year I was able to attend their banquet (as an honored guest). There banquet was great and offered me the chance come up with some new ideas for our own program (to be held in February of 2007).
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I can’t believe the headlines about the U.S. economy any more. One day we’re on the path to destruction, the next day we’ve hit bottom and are on the road to recovery. Are the numbers different? No. Is the spin on the numbers different? You bet they are.

Consider inflation. The Fed bases their interest rate decisions partially on inflation numbers. Part of the reason the Fed raised rates 17 times in the last two years is the fear of inflation. New Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke has made his career as an inflation fighter. Last Friday, CNN Money proclaimed in a headline, “Inflation is dead…for now!” This was based on data from the Consumer Price Index, the tool that measures the prices consumers pay for goods and services. What did the numbers say? They said nothing. The CPI was unchanged from the previous month which had posted a .5 decrease from the previous month.
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This is from my favorite entertainment blog on the Internet… it is actually a ‘bubble’ blog. I’m talking about the Housing Panic blog.

Here is a comment from the the blogs owner in this thread…

We’re witnessing the downfall of Western Society folks. Led by realtors.

This guy is great for laughs. All that has happened lately is that the blogs owner has had his views challenged in recent days. Now he has become unhinged.

I spent the early evening last night at the local City Council meeting. I thought that the new P&Z commissioners were to be name and since I was an applicant I figured I should be there. Well the P&Z stuff wasn’t on the agenda and so there is no news to report on for that. I still don’t know who the current P&Z commission recommended for the next year.

One item at the meeting that did stand out was there is a new company that is coming to make a home in Kingman. I keep saying that jobs are the thing around here (well that and water). The City Council awarded a bid for 30 acres of land near the airport to CANTEX Inc.

A couple of the executives for CANTEX were in attendance and they were welcomed by the council. I didn’t quite hear how many jobs would ultimately be created when they are up and running at full speed, but initially there will be 40 jobs for a time period.
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Due to a recent post that I made a few days ago about “lock bumping,” I have received a few emails from people that had never heard of this. I had also never heard of this until I read it in the paper.

One of the people that emailed me was a gentleman by the name of Mark. He has actually created a product which prevents lock bumping. Feel free to visit his website at www.keypout.com. Clever name he has for his product Key-P-Out.

It still amazes me today how many tactics these people come up with in order to break into people’s homes!

Wanna hear something even worse? Do a search in google under the video section for “lock bumping”. Several different videos come up that explain how to lock bump and one of them……IS A KID showing you how to do it!!!!!!!!
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I didn’t realize it’s been almost a week since I’ve posted on this blog. The real world has been very intrusive. I had to finish working on the upstairs bathroom. This is something I’ve been “working” on for six months. Sometimes I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

The holidays have taken their toll as well what with all the shopping and parties. Wait, I haven’t done any shopping yet. I’m not alone though. But it’s another bit of procrastination.

The big news is the first ever Yankee Blog Swap takes place tomorrow. I’m trading with Kevin Boer from 3 Oceans Real Estate in Palo Alto. You’ll have go there to see what my post is tomorrow. And yes, I haven’t started yet. More procrastination.

I hope Kevin doesn’t procrastinate, since he’ll be posting over here tomorrow. I’m looking forward to reading what he has to say.
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