Phillip's Blog

The holidays can be an especially painful time for those who are serving our country abroad in the armed forces ...separated from family and friends during a season that probably evokes so many memories and emotions!

The Xerox Corporation has kindly set up a website that gives everyone an EASY way to say thanks to our troops abroad!

Take a moment out, in the midst of business and shopping, and go to: www.letssaythanks.com

There you can you can pick out a Thank You card, Xerox will print it, and it will be sent to a soldier currently serving in Iraq! It takes just a few seconds, and it costs you nothing for this simple expression of gratitude! You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to some member of the armed services.

--thanks to the TAR Digest for this tip!

Here we go…welcome to my first blog! Oh, talking has never been a problem for me; my problem has always been to say something useful and relevant. That is the main reason for this blog, not to spout off my opinions, but to render something useful to your life, without trying to sell you something. Novel approach, huh?

Let’s talk about the market in Middle Tennessee and more specifically the Greater Nashville Market for a minute. As you may or may not know, that includes Davidson County and the 5 surrounding counties. The question that I hear most frequently from folks when discussing real estate is “how’s the market?” Of course my standard response is “fine,” but that’s not very descriptive and it quickly separates those who are genuinely interested in knowing what’s going on from those that are just making conversation.

Every month I put together a set of charts that show month by month caparisons to the two previous years. While I am generally a quick study on a lot of stuff, when it comes to numbers I have always been better able to understand them if I can put them in some sort of graphic format. This may be a universal trait for everyone when attempting to identify trends, I don’t know. What I do know is that when I blurt out a verbal comparison, people’s eyes kind of glaze over and drift off toward the ceiling. But, when I put the numbers on a colorful graph, their eyes widen with instant understanding. Evidently, most folks are visual learners.

It’s no secret we have experienced something of a boom in real estate over the past 5 years. It’s also no secret that the market is down right now. The question is: down from what? Most of this drop has been caused by unrealistic inflation in house prices in some parts of the country, a quadrupling of insurance rates in Florida, and perpetuated by a media hysteria (read: “feeding frenzy on negativity”) this past summer in terms of the “mortgage crisis.” That is a whole different subject for another blog, but the bottom line is that the market is still down in Middle Tennessee.

The three main indicators that I track are Median Home Prices, the actual number of Units Sold, and current Inventory. When the market goes down, the Home price and Units Sold goes down and Inventory goes up. Easy to understand but here are the charts to illustrate:

As you can see, the median home price is about 3% above last year at this time, yet the total number of units sold is about 33% below last November. All this is happening while inventory has soared above the two previous years by nearly 22%, a big increase and attributable primarily to home builders not paying attention to the supply and demand rule. They basically were continuing to build even though demand had dropped off significantly making for a very competitive marketplace.

Now, while all that could be construed as bad news, pay attention to the trend of the sold units and the inventory charts. They clearly show that while the market is down, the decline has eased somewhat. One might even say that we have hit the bottom and show signs of beginning to equalize. What does that mean? Well, my opinion (and it’s worth exactly what you are paying for it) is that we have hit the bottom and are moving back to a more equalized market. It is easy to draw the conclusion from this that all factors point toward a great spring selling season! In fact, I’m so confident of this that I’m expanding my business and increasing agent count to handle the increased demand coming in the spring.

Now is the time to prepare for the coming market so that you are ready and don’t miss a single minute. Call us to review your plans and see how you can take advantage of it. We have several different products that will help and you can see all of them by visiting our Menu of Services page. All scaled just to your needs. Yes, that was a sales pitch. I just couldn’t conclude without one and you knew it.

From my family to yours . . . Merry Christmas!