Charlottesville’s Real Estate Blog since 2005.

Clear, Honest Market Analysis. For People, Not Realtors.

This is some of what I’m reading to try to understand the Charlottesville area real estate market … Monday or Tuesday I’ll be posting a full-on real estate market update that will be more relevant to you and me than the either Case Shiller or Corelogic … not as detailed, but more relevant.

I can’t imagine being a real estate consumer in this market; I read this stuff every day, all day, live and breathe real estate and it’s all I can do to keep my head above water with the news. I am in constant search of consistency, but there is none.– Analyst: Is housing’s double dip already over? (archived: 2011)

According to Case-Shiller’s famous monthly index for March (it’s actually an average of three months), the nation’s housing was double-dipping, with a 4.2% decline in the first quarter. Home prices in 18 cities of their 20 tracked dropped in March on a monthly basis; 12 hit new lows.

A day later CoreLogic’s release of its index for April (also a three months average) suggested: maybe not, or maybe not any more. Their home price index showed a 0.7% increase between March and April, the first increase in this index since the homebuyer tax credit expired in mid-2010.

– Affordable Housing Groups Once Again Acting As Human Shields For Banksters

But making lending safer for everyone (including taxpayers) is contrary to the objectives of the mortgage industrial complex, which wants as much credit as possible on the most generous terms possible to as many people as possible. So to mask how the goal is really to fatten industry wallets, the real estate cohort long ago figure out that the best cover for their real objectives was to get the affordable housing types to be their front men.

– Housing Prices cartoons (no longer available) – might as well seek some levity.

– When the Value of Housing Ruins the Home

– Housing Overhang Persists

– Just How out of line are house prices?

– Upward Slope of House Prices

– For some fun – Google 2015 – What will it look like? (archived: 2015)

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I have been been representing buyers and sellers in Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Central Virginia since 2001. Get local insight born of experience.

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