I have heard about the thieves going for copper and other metals,  but didn’t think it would hit home.  Had a vacant property hit this week and it appears that with this trip the only thing in mind was aquiring all the copper tubing they could get their bolt cutters on.  Fortunately this time someone was driving by and saw the red pick-up parked behind the house.  Thanks to this good person’s thinking,  the two thieves are now eating meals on tax payer dollars and will see time in court.  So you think it was at night.  Wrong,  midmorning.  And better yet,  took the goods right to Traction Auto Parts where police arrived right in time.  So,  check your vacant properties often.  Hope we don’t see much of this as times get a little tougher. 

Was invited to a National City seminar today and really appreciated the information they had to share.  Lots of charts referred to  enlightening information in regards to where we have economically come from the past several years.  Of course it doesn’t take charts to know that there are many economic conditions that are building fear in the market place.  Sometimes I think that news reporters feel that  there obigation to mankind is to  build fear among the people.

One chart that caught my attention was how the loan shift was moving away from secondary bank loans to government secured mortgages mostly known as FHA loans.  Most of those were coming from the DPA (down payment assistance) loans where the seller was funding the down payment for the FHA loan.  We all knew at the time that this was not a good practice however they continued to make them until the back was broken with high foreclosure rates.  Why it took awhile for someone to figure out that the seller was not just giving money away,  they were merely raising the price to cover the DPA.  So, houses were selling for more than they were worth and when payments can’t be made,  the gov’t owns a property with a higher mortgage than the property is worth.    Hopefully we have learned from this as we move into the future. 

Needless to say,  National City has made headlines in the news.  I hope that you study the facts when listening to the news reports.  If you have thoughts of moving your funds from one bank to another,  make sure you understand the whole picture and don’t rely on one TV news report. 

I felt good after today’s seminar.  Not so much for the current conditions,  but the economic forecast that 2009 should be a much brighter picture and don’t be surprised if it is early in the year.   Finally someone agrees with me.   

Everyday I get questions about the local market.  Recently I was looking at the data available for the month of August.  September data not yet available.   The data I am sharing is for Union Twp., our largest township and also takes in the city of Crawfordsville and Lake Holiday  including sales in all three school districts.  At the end of Aug 08 there were 221 residential homes on the market vs. 218 on the market August 07.  The average list price this August was $150,000. vs. and average list price of $141,000. for August 07.   The significant difference comes in average sales price:  Aug 08, we had an average sales price of $100,000.00  while the average sales price Aug. 07 was $112,000.00.   When we break this down we see that in 2007 we had a  list price compared to sales price at 79.4%.  In 2008 we see the list price to sales price to be 66.6%.  The number of sales were actually 3 more for 2008. 

Now to answer the question “how’s the market”,  listing #s are basically the same,  number of sales are basically the same,  however the average sales prices are down about 10.7% and we would call that depreciation of values. 

So what does this mean to me?  Sales thru August were comparable to a year ago,  however values are down,  buyers are happy and sellers are wondering what happened.