Yesterday I was doing a local television program, Talk of the Town, with stockbroker Brian Finnerty.  Brian started the program by reading the article in Hilton Head Island’s local paper, The Island Packet, which said there was a prediction that real estate prices in America had bottomed out. 

It was a good article and I was glad to see them saying that prices were at the bottom.  However, I started to think about it and asked how you could make a statement about that because all real estate is local.  There are some areas that have better real estate markets than others.

Prices in Las Vegas, Southern Florida and Phoenix are continuing to deteriote because of the overbuilding that occurred in those areas.  Markets like Washington, DC and New York continue to be much better markets because of limited supply. 

It is even hard to predict markets on Hilton Head because the markets in the different areas on Hilton Head are very different. 

I prefer to look more locally at the different areas and try to compare how they are to what they were in the past.