I wrote a piece a couple weeks back called, Did Your Louisville Home Actually Drop in Value? In the piece, I pointed to data that showed while the National home value average dropped about 25% since the housing decline, Louisville homes actually gained 1.5%. I think it's important that people know the truth about their home's value. Now, this doesn't mean everyone's home gained value, many did in fact lose value. Every market is a fluid situation where people, and their emotional decisions, ultimately dictate what something is worth. When you fall in love with a home, sometimes you overpay.

Certain homes are better suited to rental properties than others but real estate investors can find a lot to like about Louisville. The Wall St. Journal had a piece earlier this week called 10 Best and Worst Markets for Real Estate Investors. It cites a Local Market Monitor, Inc. that looks utilizes "equilibrium" home prices. These take into consideration what home values should probably be in relation to population, job growth, income and other factors. Based on this report, here are the Top 10 Conservative Metro Areas: 1. Tulsa, Okla. new 2. Oklahoma City, Okla. 3. San Diego-Car

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 news of the month in Louisville real estate is the upcoming date of April 30th. With the tax credit opportunity coming to an end, those looking to cash in the $8,000 (first-time homebuyers) or the $6,500 (existing homeowners) need to move quickly. My loan specialist friend, Rodny Davidson, sent me this piece from the Wall St. Journal does a good job explaining the requirements that a borrower should expect when talking with a loan company about qualifying. To qualify for a mortgage, you will need a job and at least two recent pay stubs. You also will be asked for two years of W-2

Quick post just to draw your attention to this well-written piece by the Wall St. Journal calling out the trials involved with purchasing a distressed property—either a foreclosure or short-sale. As is usually the case, the more tricky the transaction, the more valuable it is having expertise on your side.

This piece in the NYT is aptly titled Home Sales, All Over the Map and that's exactly the point! Depending on where you live, housing markets are extremely different from one another. Areas like D.C. and San Francisco which had seen home values dropping drastically are leveling out, whereas, Las Vegas and most of Florida are still seeing these numbers fall. Like I just posted yesterday, Louisville isn't seeing those dramatic drops because we never saw dramatic increases years before. So is this a good time for you to buy? As always, that depends on your situation. For Amy Musial,

The Wall St. Journal is now talking about positive news regarding the housing market. There's a change! But even this news, while positive, isn't especially noteworthy. In another sign that the housing market may have begun to recover, the number of people who signed contracts to purchase homes increased for the third month in a row. The reason that this isn't a big deal is that this data is seasonal—home sales increase from January to February; from February to March; and from March to April most every year, good market or bad. But here's the good part. Year over year, th

Just a quick post to bring this issue to your attention. I feel like half of my job is battling the largely negative news coming from almost every media outlet on a daily basis. Sure, you can speak to how foreclosures are hurting builders, like the Wall St. Journal does in this piece called Foreclosed Houses Haunt Home Builders. That's certainly true. Or, you could talk about how this phenomenon positively affects consumers, who now have a much greater selection, lower home prices and historically low rates. It's almost like the media wants our economy to continue to slide with how much

It's always interesting to me to see how headlines are formed. Sometimes they convey the true meaning of the article but many times they don't. Take this heading from The Wall St. Journal: Price Cuts Spur Home Sales Home sales rising should be great news right? Well, they seem to feel the need to couch it alongside some negative news—the price cuts. Are we sure that it was the price cuts the forced the increase? I'm sure they played a role but many factors, including things like the weather, affect home sale numbers. Then the WSJ does it again with the tagline: Largest Monthly

My thanks to a reader who thoughtfully sent this in. The Wall St. Journal does certain things very well. One of them is their "handy-dandy" charts. The other is their in-depth analysis. This time with Shrinking Prices, Rising Delinquencies, they only batted .500. This was due in large part to the chart not working properly. That's OK, we'll forgive them because this piece wasn't hidden behind a subscriber log-in. So how did we do? Since the housing market peak in the 4th quarter of 2005, the median home price in Louisville, Kentucky is up 3.2%! Now, this isn't the 4-5% annual apprec