The above was a popular country music song that sums up how I feel about 2008.  I am writing this on December 30th because I am ready for it to be over today – I do not want another day of 2008.

From someone who has been in the Real Estate business on Hilton Head for 27 years, everything that could possibly go wrong in 2008 did – we had bank foreclosures, credit problems and on October 1st everything went haywire when we had the “financial meltdown”. 

Pent up Demand

It seems to me that so many people have the attitude that they are going to wait until the real estate market bottoms out.  With not many people buying property, anxious sellers are reducing their prices to the point that they feel is necessary to get the property sold.

Looking to the future of Real Estate

In the future I think we will look back and all say that we should have bought in December of 2008. 

All my clients who bought after September 11th in December and January of 2001 and 2002 are very happy because values went up afterwards.  This is the last time we were in a similar market where nothing seems to be moving.  This is why smart money is buying now!

Here recently anybody who’s read any of the publications or online blogs knows that almost every single writer is predicting doom and gloom for real estate.

Our local paper recently had a couple articles that could make someone think ‘wow don’t ever buy real estate’.  One of the headlines said “Luxury Buyers Don’t Purchase”.

However, I did read an article that was very interesting the other day on Yahoo talking about how the new refinancing boom will help the real estate market.

Lower Rates

The article said “the Treasury and the Federal Reserve have created an environment which makes this development almost impossible to avoid.”  It also went on the state “it is quite likely the country is about to enter a new mortgage refinance boom”. 

Local Lenders

By talking to local lenders we all know they have been barraged in the last two weeks with people wanting to refinance. 

Some data I saw from the Mortgage Bankers Association said they had the highest number of applications for loans since July 2003.

What all this means is that obviously when people refinance their rates are lower which means they can afford more houses which means this may be “the ray of sunshine that we’ve been looking for”. 

Obviously Wall Street has been in the news recently and most of the things that have been going on have made investors leery of the trust factor (of Wall Street). 

Helping Real Estate

Obviously when things like this happen people tend to have more confidence in the real estate market then they do investments.  In the long run this will help people purchase more real estate even though in the short run we have been effected because people’s investments have been so low that they don’t have the money to purchase. 

People Believe in Real Estate

The advantage of buying real estate is that people get to make the decision them-self.   They pick out the property they like and they feel better about their investments. 

In the past, more people have invested in Wall Street because they felt these were “professionals”.  But the erratic behavior and dishonesty of several people have hurt Wall Street as a whole, even though there are bad real estate agents just like there are bad stock brokers.  Recently the bad stock brokers have been getting more publicity than bad real estate agents. 

Obviously the greed on Wall Street is bad for everybody.  I’m not saying I’m glad it happened but I do think it is going to make people more conscience that one of the best investments they can make is real estate.