"...home prices have reversed course and are finally rising again, and you know
that Case-Shiller has been the gloomiest, scariest-headline-producing monitor of
the real estate market for the past three years -- some say: We have truly
turned the corner here. "
Real estate sales in Florence for the first six months of the year are down about 29% from the first half of 2008 and '08 sales were poor. But activity and pending sales have picked up this past month, all good news. Now if we can just get those pending sales closed. It's certainly not as easy as it once was, primarily because of all of the new lending requirements. For example, now lenders must check borrower-provided tax returns against data from the IRS in order to ferret out borrowers who might have prepared one tax return for the IRS and another more favorable return for their lender. And lenders must verify a buyer's employment three days before funding the loan. Lenders tell me that there's more new verification rules to come. No doubt about it: the lending pendulum has swung to the far right. And it will swing back toward the middle eventually. No one wants loans that result in the type of loose lending that allowed so many people to borrow money that had no business borrowing. The question remains as to just when the pendulum will begin to swing back toward the middle. I doubt it will be any time soon, so buyers, sellers and real estate agents all need to be prepared to cool their jets and allow at least 8 weeks for a real estate deal to close. In the meantime, let's all hope that we never go back to the Wild West style of lending because we never want to have to mop up a mess like the real estate market has been in for the last two years. It's back to basics, thank goodness and we'll all be the beneficiaries--in our pocketbooks--with more real estate sales and less federal taxes being used to bail out all the bad actors.
