The numbers are looking good!

Numbers review – we are up as a company! Our transactions are up 21% over last year – We have gone from 674 last year to 874 this year. With 80 agents that is a 10.6 average number of transactions per agent through July!

HERA update – no more closings within 7 days, lock early, get accurate numbers to your lender from your title company – more communication between all parties is paramount – HERA affects any applications taken after July 30th – any questions on HERA?

Advice for getting appraisals to come in at value: meet appraiser at property and provide all comps you believe are important – provide numbers we provide you – show anything else you believe was integral in the sale, i.e. number of contracts, number of showings, days on market, number of competing properties, month’s supply in hood, in the surrounding area and any insight you can gain from listing agents on houses under contract. Don’t forget to mention condition of recent sales through your previewing efforts-you do preview, don’t you? Any detail can make all the difference. Be sure to ask the appraisers familiarity with the neighborhood, trends, prices, etc as many appraisers are coming from great distances.

10 year treasuries are on the rise putting upward pressure on long term rates – primarily mortgage rates – encourage having your clients lock in their rates
New home sales are up dramatically – KHOV 90 sales last 60 days
Existing home sales are up nationally 5 consecutive months of growth, first time since July of 2003 – what happened then? Our inventory numbers are down and Case Shiller pricing index – 14 of 20 markets are up – first time in 3 years this has happened – if anyone asks – yes we hit the bottom - locally in November – nationally now. This is also good to share with appraisers gang!

No big wave of foreclosures hitting our market – BPO orders are down
Short sales are taking longer – second trusts are unresponsive for weeks at a time

More arms length transactions are occurring
Gov’t is pushing top 25 loan servicers to have 500,000 trial modifications in place by Nov 1st – only 200,000 have actually been done. Banks may be forced into doing modifications by enacting a Bankruptcy bill that got defeated earlier this year where banks will be forced by bankruptcy judges to slash balances of people who are delinquent on their mortgages in involuntarily.

Other key indicators to watch – Index of Leading Economic Indicators (interest rate spread, building permits, stock prices, weekly initial claims (inverted), average weekly manufacturing hours, index of supplier deliveries (vendor performance), and manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials*. The negative contributors – beginning with the largest negative contributor – were real money supply*, manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods*, and index of consumer expectations) – rose close to 1 point in June – 3rd straight month it has grown – 1st time index has grown 3 consecutive months since 2004. The Index of Leading Economic Indicators are closely tied to the housing industry and its recovery. Obviously we didn’t hear much about these numbers in the news – strange, huh.

New Unemployment claims filed are down 5 straight times indicating worst may be behind us. The number of Americans filing claims for jobless benefits fell more than economists predicted, a sign some employers have stopped paring staff as the recession eases.

Applications dropped by 38,000 to 550,000 in the week ended Aug. 1, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington, the fifth straight time claims were under 600,000 after being above that level since January. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance rose.

The bottom line is we are continuing to see great progress in our market – we just need more inventory, rates to remain low, and prices to increase slightly – not significantly and we will continue on our pace of record transactions. Get it? Got it? Good!