I was at my farm this weekend and was talking to a good friend of mine Bud Bowers.  He is a farmer and works on some of the land near my farm.  I was asking him what he was planting this year and what the prices were.  He was quoting me that the prices of cotton, soy beans, corn and peanuts were much lower than they were last year.  Then he said something that made a lot of sense.  He said his father used to say that the biggest insect we have is prices.  The more I thought about what Mr. Bower Sr. said, it made a lot of sense.  In other words, they have all kinds of problems farming, but the biggest problem they have is the prices for the commodities that they get.  It kind of made me think about the real estate market. 

We have insects as well; government regulations, interest rates, loan values on mortgages, insurance; but the biggest problem we are facing right now is that prices have been dropping.  Any farmer knows that if it costs you $400/acre to plant corn and you only make $300 on the corn, you have lost money.  That is what we are facing today.  People who bought property in 2004 and 2005 cannot sell their property for what they bought it for so even though the insurance might be high, taxes might be high, utilities might be high, the main problem is pricing.  I think that is true not only in farming, but also in Real Estate.  I bet Mr. Corin Bowers, Sr. would have made a great real estate agent because he understood the concept of pricing.