Below you'll find our eight monthly reports for the following Louisville housing markets. These charts display Louisville home sales and Louisville median home values with a trend line. Each chart relates directly to an "area" as defined by the Louisville MLS. Monthly Reports Area 2: Butchertown/Highlands/Germantown Big drop in sales as values remain steady. Area 3: Clifton/Crescent Hill/St. Matthews Nice increase for June but lost last year's bigger June so trend drops. Sales, however, big winner. Area 6: Buechel/Highview/Okolona/Fern Creek Medium drop in values but all oth

Just posted an article entitled, Counting Your Chickens and Other Old-Fashioned Wisdom, on my personal blog. I'd love for you to check it out and hear your thoughts! Have a great 4th of July weekend!

2010 trending over past two years but short of 2006-07 levels. We began this feature on Louisville Homes Blog back in April and will be updating this chart periodically. Putting this data into chart form makes it easier to discern trends against past performance. Enjoy! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Just look at that! We're still in June here and Louisville is routinely experiencing high's in the 90's. That's extreme! Especially when you consider that the historical average for June in Louisville is just 83 degrees. While the lack of rain has encouraged house hunting, the high temperatures have sent many running for the air conditioned climates of indoors. Here's hoping July cools down... just a tad.

Happy Birthday card that the Jefferson Co. PVA sends out to homeowners on their 65th birthday. (click to enlarge) Did you know that property owners in the state of Kentucky who are at least 65 years of age are eligible to receive the Homestead Exemption? Neither did I! That is until I got this cool post card from the good folks at Jefferson County Property Valuation Administrator.

Does where you live affect the safety of your kids? I referenced Steve Harney's great blog in my article What Is Your Louisville Home Worth? earlier this month and now I'm back at it again. He's just making too much sense. This time, Mr. Harney has a bone to pick with a Wall St. Journal article by Richard Florida (great real estate name, huh?) that promoted the idea that people who rent their homes are happier than people who own their homes. The article seems to the single attribute of home ownership and tries to correlate that to happiness for certain U.S. cities. Let me try to un

The sketch above is entitled Maison de Famille. This is a design by Provident Homes and Jeremy McGraw. I just love Homearama! When I some of my clients who aren't from Louisville ask what Homearama is and I tell them, I'm usually greeted with blank stares. It's probably just one of those things you have to see for yourself. This year's Homearama should be great as usual. It will be held from July 10th through the 25th at Shakes Run, a Canfield Development. Visit the official Homearama site for ticket prices and more information. We'll see if Provident Homes can repeat their winning

Just finished reading Homebuilders Less Confident in Economic Recovery. It's useful to note: The National Association of Home Builders said Tuesday its housing market index fell to 17 in June, sinking five points after two straight months of increases. It was the lowest level since March. Some of this is due to the fact that the National Tax Credit wasn't thought to be extended. Just this week we find out that it will. Even still, with so much existing Louisville homes for sale inventory, it's a safe bet that new construction will continue to see their start numbers slide.

Just thought I'd share what a friend sent to me today. Not sure if this holds to public perception or not but even with "the worst housing market in decades" the numbers tell a different story.

From the AP comes: WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday approved a plan to give homebuyers an extra three months to finish qualifying for federal tax incentives that boosted home sales this spring. [link] Great news for those who are either working a deal or very close to it!

Usually, I'm all about charts, maps, graphs... you get the picture. When I read the excerpt from a Web site I visit regularly, I was excited to try it out for my hometown of Louisville, KY. Trouble is, this might be one of those few times where the picture doesn't communicate the information very well. Maybe another kind of chart would work better? All I can tell is that it appears that more people are moving out of Louisville than are moving in. This agrees with census data that says we've lost 13,000 people since 1990.

Indian Springs is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Louisville's East End. Partly because we used to live there. It's a great place! Another reason is because like GlenOaks, Glenmary, Hurstbourne, Lake Forest and Polo Fields the neighborhood is built around a beautiful, green golf course. Given the amazing location of Indian Springs, I would expect the home prices to be higher, so that's another big plus. This is a Louisville neighborhood definitely worth your consideration. Learn More » This post is one in an ongoing series of spotlights on the Best Louisville Neighborhoods. If

This just in, New home tax credit extended, Kentucky residents get another year. Kentucky residents have until the end of the year, instead of July 25, to get a credit worth up to $5,000 off their state income taxes for buying a newly constructed home. Click the link above for more information about this home buyer incentive.

This is a topic of great importance in today's changing real estate market and one that we will continue to cover here at LouisvilleHomesBlog.com consistently. Back in March, we asked Joe Manausa, who covers Tallahassee Real Estate, to look at this topic and he responded with, How To Find the Value of Your Louisville Home, which highlights the different ways in which a home can be valued. Just last month I wrote Determining Home Values, Zillow ‘Zestimates’ Are Fraught With Danger that warns against the dangers of using free online data to create a home value without digging deep

Below you'll find our eight monthly reports for the following Louisville housing markets. These charts display Louisville home sales and Louisville median home values with a trend line. Each chart relates directly to an "area" as defined by the Louisville MLS. Update 6/7: I've created this map of Louisville real estate areas to help anyone unfamiliar with how our MLS groups houses. Monthly Reports Area 2: Butchertown/Highlands/Germantown Home values return to norm as sales continue predicable trend. Area 3: Clifton/Crescent Hill/St. Matthews Values are simply flat as volu

Louisville Homes Blog will experience a few days off while its owner realizes peace and harmony on the beaches in South Carolina. Have a great week!

This article was written by Jessica Schuler with J. Renee Designs with permission for LouisvilleHomesBlog.com to publish so that you can be better informed in all of your housing decisions here in Louisville, Kentucky. They are a full service Interior Design Firm that offers Interior Design, Re-Design, and Home Staging Services. There are many myths surrounding the interior design profession that we are always happy to debunk. One of those myths is that the average person cannot afford an interior designer. Here are the reasons why this isn't true and how a designer can actually save yo

I saw recently that the National Association of Realtors published their annual Smartphone Survey Report. A great deal of this report is already well-known (and boring) but a couple of the results caught my eye. Keep in mind this survey is targeting real estate agents not the public at large. When I became a Realtor in Louisville, I had a standard cell phone but I knew I needed a more powerful communication tool. So I performed some research and eventually purchased a BlackBerry. This new device was certainly better than my Samsung but it wasn't incredible. Email was much better, te

Keep in mind that these numbers are affected by distressed transactions which are a good portion of our sales and currently increasing. Stats and projections provided by CoreLogic. In Louisville-Jefferson County, home prices, including distressed sales, declined by -0.73 percent in March 2010 compared to March 2009. This compares to February's year-over-year HPI, which was 0.87 percent.** Excluding distressed transactions, year-over-year HPI for March is 1.87 percent [editor: that's an increase], compared to February which was 0.37 percent. CoreLogic is projecting the 12-month forecast

A friend sent me a great article today about the state of affairs in our nation's lending markets. Sure, some the recent changes were sorely needed and came just in the nick-of-time. Other decisions by our Federal government are questionable at best. Being a real estate expert doesn't make me a mortgage specialist so I defer to those who focus on the lending environment full-time for guidance. Here are some key excerpts from Today’s Lending Environment: Calling Oliver Stone! by Dean Hartman. (If interested, I encourage you to read the whole piece.) We have seen some very posi