It's about time too! The forecast is calling for Bend and CO to get really really cold!  Record setting cold.  It is sure nice to see the Cascades with a fresh covering of snow and to know that there is plenty more on the way.  Mt. Bachelor is anxious to open and we are overdue to hit the slopes. The sound of studded snowtires crunching along on the asphalt is a song to my ears as it lets us know that one of the funnest and most beautiful times of the year is upon us. Happy and Safe Holidays To All! For winter lovers here are some links to Bachelor and more.   ·                                 MtBachelor.com ·                                 BendSkiClub.org ·                                 TumaloLanglauf.com ·                                 NWSkiers.org ·                              ... 12/12/2008

What Areas in Central Oregon Can We Short Sale Properties In? When it comes to short sales and what areas or cities we cover, it is the same as our traditional sales. We cover the entire Central Oregon area. We have agents that cover Bend OR, Redmond OR,Sisters OR,La Pine OR and Sunriver OR and the surrounding areas. So if a short sale is the next step for you, a friend, or family member, and they are located anywhere in Central Oregon, then do contact me. Our short sale negotiation team covers the entire Central Oregon area and if you are anywhere other than the these cities we can refer you to the right person. We can short sale all residential properties. Whether it is a condo, single family residence, or residential multi unit property, we can take care of it. The housing market is ... 12/12/2008

Want to help raise funds for a great cause and enjoy a meal out?!  Here's how and where you can participate:   When:  Tuesday, Dec. 16th Where:  Black Bear Diner of Bend 1465 NE 3rd Street What Time:  6:00am - 9:00pm  Bring in the attached coupon and Black Bear Diner will donate 10% of their sales for the time frame above to the Bend Habitat for Humanity.    DON'T FORGET YOUR COUPON!! ********************************************************** BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!   On Thursday, Dec. 18th, Habitat for Humanity will be Christmas Caroling to as many of the Habitat families as time will allow.  And you're invited to join them!   Meet At:  Habitat Office  (1860 NE 4th St) What Time:  5:30pm   (For Cookies & Hot Cocoa)   Caroling will begin at 6:00pm.  For more detailed information & to RS... 12/12/2008

OVERVALUED  That is....House Price Valuations according to www.nationalcity.com/housevaluation Our approach to determining statistically normal house values1 considers not only house prices and interest rates, but household incomes, population densities and any historical premiums or discounts metropolitan areas have exhibited over time. We examined these factors for 330 metro areas now accounting for 78 percent of all existing housing units in America and 86 percent of all related real estate value, to determine what house prices should be, in this statistical sense. Based on an historical examination of 155 actual metro area price corrections during the 1985-2008 period (see Appendix C), we consider valuations in excess of +35 percent as "extremely overvalued" and present a risk of s... 12/10/2008

  REO Roundtable - Hear from an awesome panel of top agents who are mastering the market of the moment through short sales, foreclosures and REOs in this three-part roundtable discussion.   Discover their secrets to success as we discuss: How to approach short sales so that they're profitable The challenges of short sales and how to overcome them Differentiating between REOs and short sales How to lead generate for REOs  The challenges of REOs and how to overcome them     Start your climb today. www.agentmountain.com SHIFT is the newest book in the nationally best-selling Millionaire Real Estate Series - more than 1,000,000 copies in print. Visit www.millionairesystems.com/shift for more information and free downloads. 12/09/2008

Big actions continue to impact Mortgage-Backed Securities, and first, let's talk about the Treasury and their desire to jump start housing with 4.5% mortgage rates.  I know this has the media all a-twitter.  It was a story that broke in Thursday's Wall Street Journal article (click here) and was picked up in most newspapers on Friday  with quotes like this from the NYT News Service  "At the Treasury Department, meanwhile, top officials continued to work on a plan to boost the housing market by subsidizing 30-year home mortgages with rates as low as 4.5 percent - a level that homebuyers have not seen since the early 1960s." Perhaps you have seen some renewed interest from home buyers triggered by this news bit.  The key is that hope for a program from the government is nice, BUT every ot... 12/08/2008

Re-Posted From Theresa Bastians Excellent Blog! An article from Bloomberg News crossed my desk this week - apparently Realogy, the parent company of such venerable real estate franchise as Century 21 and Coldwell Banker, is under fire from some of its investors over a debt swap proposal.  The investor described Realogy as "Deeply Insolvent" in a court filings.  --------------------------- What a contrast to this letter the leadership of my company recently shared with all of us: In this time of banks and real estate companies failing, consolidating or taking on billions of dollars in debt, I thought it a good time to share the state of Keller Williams Realty with you.   Our company has not one dollar of financing debt and we remain strongly, soundly profitable. We are growing, opening 2... 12/06/2008

November was a slow month with only 69 homes selling compared to 132 home sales last November. There are still a lot of short sales and bank owned properties getting attention but they're not the only homes selling.    The home that sold for $150,000 was not a short sale or banked owned property. It was a 3 bedroom/2 bath, 1108 sq. ft. home in NE Bend with a motivated seller that priced their home well and it sold in 48 days. That sales price equates to $135/sq. ft. Take a peek at the home: http://coar.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Centraloregon&PRGNAME=MLSLogin&ARGUMENT=%2Fed2a85PExTLX6L7HCOW1IENdwKYxTgmSou%2BmXj1Nm0%3D&KeyRid=1 The only home to sell in the $550,000 - $599,000 range was a 3 bedroom/2 bath, 2239 sq. ft. home in Sunrise Village on a 0.83 acre lot with Cascade V... 12/03/2008

No.... far from it.    Things are a lot slower and prices have declined as they have in many parts of our fine country and short sales are making up the bulk of closings right now but just take a look at what Bend has to offer.  It is still an incredible place to live!   Here's what the national media have to say about Bend, OR: ·                                 America's Best Outside Towns - Outside Magazine 2006 ·                                 Best Outdoor Meccas - National Geographic Adventure Magazine ·                                 Top 10 Places to Buy a Second Home - MSN Money ·                                 Booming Bend, 01/2007 - The Economist ·                                 Best Places To Live, 2006 - Money Magazine ·                                 Other Interesting Ar... 12/03/2008

We’ll have to call it Green Tuesday from now on – or Fat Tuesday comes to November.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was the announcement by the Federal Reserve of actions that are bringing back demand to the Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Market.    30 year fixed rates for conforming loans are now in the 5.5% range or better!   Also be aware that the conforming loan limit for some areas is up to $625,000!   We’ve been telling you for weeks that all of the inflation and economic news would lead to better rates than we have been seeing but an imbalance of supply (hi) and demand (lo) for MBS was artificially keeping the rates above their natural position.  Well that took a significant step in the right direction Tuesday with the announcement of a $600B purchase of direct obligations and... 12/01/2008

I really, really hope this is not true. To even fathom 300,000 more foreclosures nationwide than what we have experienced so far this year does not excite me at all.I read somewhere recently that if the government were to have given each American citizen $400,000, that would be the equivalent of $700 billion bailout.Imagine what you and I could do with the $400,000. Wouldn't we pay off our debt, maybe buy a little something here and there, invest in the stock market or buy real estate?Now, I am no economic guru, but this solution makes sense. Or, the other option is to bailout these huge companies that made questionable decisions about how to make a profit and spend the tax payers money to do it only to put the USA another $700 billion in debt.I'm just venting right now. But someone nee... 11/24/2008

Happy Thanksgiving and I hope your short week is productive and then filled with warm family memories.  Here are some of the key actions we are watching: Washington activity continues to dominate the economic landscape.  The Treasury, Fed and FDIC decided late last night to further back CITI with a lifeline of $306B on their debt and an injection of $20B. In exchange, US Taxpayer/investors are receiving $27B in preferred stock paying an 8% dividend. We are hopeful this one is a good investment. Obama selects Geithner from the NY Fed as Treasury Sec’y. This appears positive and has been well received on Wall St.  If anything, he may be predisposed to swinging the re-regulation pendulum too far left.  We’ll keep our eye on that. Summers and Orszag are also selected for the White House eco... 11/24/2008

 Well the stock market continues to tumble and surprise with bad news.  Last week I saw something I had never seen before – the targeted price of a stock (GM in this case which makes it all the more unusual) was in an analysts report projected to be $0.00.  That’s right, nothing.  A couple of weeks ago Mattel, the maker of Hot Wheels cars made news when it had a market cap greater than GM and now it looks like most companies might.  This is a sad statement on a decades-slow response to market demands and workforce contracts.  Let’s hope there isn’t a string-free, massive taxpayer funding of this and every “me too” industry that will need help.  The redirection of TARP funds toward capitalizing the credit system rather than buying the tainted assets is working slowly to free up credit an... 11/21/2008

What a historic week this was!  No matter your political leanings, it is a time to push for optimism both internally and with people around you. It is also the beginning of the holiday season and that gives us the chance to pause and be thankful for our many blessings, to come together and support a new President elected through a time-tested, constitutional process, and to build optimism and hope even in troubling economic times.   And we are seeing troubling times.  As the headline indicates, jobs were the key economic report of the week, and people who are well employed are hanging onto their jobs.  Unfortunately, in 2008 nearly 1.2 million jobs have been eliminated and more than half of those happened in the last 3 months.   Normally, bad news like this has a favorable impact on mor... 11/12/2008

I recently performed a CMA for a homeowner and determined a list price in the $225,000 - $250,000 range. The homeowner was surprised the value was so low because her most recent tax statement provided a "real market value" (RMV) of $290,000. She was under the impression that the RMV that the county assigns is fairly accurate and occasionally, even low. She is certainly not the only homeowner that believes this to be true. The RMV is determined with an appraisal of the property by the county in January of the current tax year. By the time you receive your tax statement in October property values have usually changed and in our case in Deschutes County, they've probably gone down. Furthermore, the RMV determined by the assessor usually lags behind actual sales prices. For example, in 2005... 11/10/2008

Fed Week was surrounded with a full-scale shift of funds from Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) into the stock market and elsewhere and with it we saw quite a negative move in bonds and rates.  But it seemed to find a floor after the announcement with a bounce favorable that continues into today.  As I mentioned in my News Flash on the announcement day, this is different from recent Fed rate changes in that the drop in rate didn't have a negative (opposite) effect on mortgage rates that are long-term and all about inflation.  Why not?  The Fed announcement wording reiterated what we have seen for the past month - Inflation appears to be in check, for now.  I've had a couple of questions about inflation recently.  Just two months ago, there was great fear of inflation and now the talk is ... 11/04/2008

October 2008 statistics have been compiled. The first thing I noticed is the number of homes on the market is 2031, down from last month by nearly 200 and down about 430 from July 2008. Of these active listings, about 200 are short sales or bank owned properties and 41 of them are listed at $200,000 or below. In fact, I have some buyers at this price point and it's very difficult to find a home for them that's NOT a short sale or bank owned. Short sales can be great deals but purchasing a home through this process can take months and you have to purchase the property AS-IS. It's too overwhelming for these first time buyers. Of the 66 contingent properties, 36 are short sales. In other words, these sellers have received offers but are waiting for approval from their lender. 13 of the 134... 11/03/2008

You’ll want to look at the MBS (mortgage backed securities) chart below that illustrates the wild ride we are on. The last 5 bars are Monday-Friday of the past week, with green being favorable to MBS and rates and red being unfavorable. Monday is the big green bar followed by another tiny green bar and then 3 red days that brought MBS back down near where they started. The steep slide in the stock market due to recession fears and the bear market is hurting the mortgage secondary market right now.   Normally, as the stock market turns worse, investment dollars flee to quality - bonds and mortgage-backed (MBS) in particular. But as of late, with the severe stock market drops, investors have had to liquidate positions to cover margin calls, cover depositor withdrawals and maintain cash po... 10/27/2008

          I'll admit, I've been a little obsessed with the arrival of fall lately -- even though we're in the midst of an idyllic stretch of Indian Summer (the high temperature for the past several days has been in the 60s, and, hallelujah, that's expected to continue into this week. It's hard to believe that little over a week ago, we had a blazing fire in the woodstove for several nights in a row!) Yesterday I drove to Lane County (see previous blog post about McKenzie Bridge) to immerse myself in fall's most festive colors. I knew from previous experience that the area would be worth seeing firsthand. But I could've just as easily stayed home and had a similar experience. Turns out Tumalo's colors this fall are mighty impressive too. In fact, I need only set foot in my front yard to... 10/20/2008

Last Monday we talked about the Treasury considering investing capital into the larger banks.  Sure enough the formal plan was announced Tuesday, and we believe it will have more credit-creating incentives than any of the other moves being contemplated.  Make no mistake about it, these efforts are to help a broken financial market.  It is going to take some time to get back into full swing, but we are seeing some normalizing of US Treasuries and LIBOR rates already appearing.  Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are still not in full demand and pricing is higher (rates along with it) than the current deflationary environment would indicate.  We will be watching for both economic indicators on inflation and impacts on supply and demand of MBS for the time being.  The housing news surprised ... 10/20/2008