Friday Facts February 11, 2011

FRIDAY FACTS
February 11, 2011

Here’s a notable quote from Tracey Velt in a RealTrends blog, “I was in the market for a house in 2005. Unsure whom we wanted to use as our real estate professional, my husband and I called the listing agents for properties we would consider. We looked at 10 homes, 10 different listing agents. Only one prequalified us. Only one took our names and asked us what we were looking for. Only one found out that we had two houses to sell in addition to the home we were buying. Guess who got our business? Guess who we’ll call the next time?”

From DSNews.com: David Shulman, a senior economist with UCLA says, “Unfortunately, even with the job gains averaging 150,000/month in 2011 and 200,000/month in 2012, unemployment will remain above 9% through the 3rd quarter of 2012.”

From an article by Mary Ellen Podmolik in RISMedia: “Looming large over the mortgage market are provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that have yet to be finalized. Among them is a requirement that mortgage lenders maintain some ‘skin’ in the game on the mortgages they originate by holding at least 5% of the credit risk rather than bundling the loans and selling them off entirely.”

NAR projects sales of existing homes will rise 7.9% to 5.3 million in 2011, and that median price will rise .5% to $173,800.

Think about it. Teresa Boardman writes in Inman News, “I am working with a single father who wants to make sure there are children in the neighborhood for his son to play with. One simple thing parents can do is look for swing sets. If there are swing sets, there are probably children to go with them. If I encouraged him to live in a neighborhood with a large population of children, I would be guilty of steering”.