The XBroker

Ahhh, Yankee blog swap time. Muahaha!!!

Time to move over Jeff, I’ll take it from here. To be honest, being a Boston guy, I was hoping to be able to get someone from New York city so I could put up some sort of Yankees Suck reference on their blog (because it’s both slightly relevant, and Romney recently passed a law that all Bostonians have to do it whenever we get the opportunity).

Fortunately for me, I don’t have the opportunity to look like even more of a Mass-hole, and got paired up with the X-Broker himself. It’s an honor to be matched with someone who made quite a name for himself so quickly in Blogistan (blogtopia?). And I’m thrilled that it makes it fairly easy for to do my take on a topic relevant to the host blog, the mortgage world. Unfortunately for Jeff, many of his readers will officially become much much stupider after reading the drivel I’m about to spit out.

It turns out, to my dismay, even though he has been pretty busy as of late, Jeff still managed to have already posted pretty much every thing I could come up with. But thank god for breaking news.

Thanks to Bloomberg, I get to present something positive. It turns out that falling bond rates have kick started some business in the mortgage world, as refinancing applications have reached the highest level in a year this month. If you really like numbers and stuff, read the article, its got some good ones ( I guess? ).

What grabbed my attention the most is what it all sums up to. To me, this points out that we could be bottoming out here. That’s bad news for bubbleheads, and possibly good news for sellers who’s properties have been sitting on the market for over 100 days. Most importantly though, is what this means for those who have been holding back waiting to “time the market” with their buying decisions. This could be a good indicator that this is the best time to strike.

Right now, we are looking at a nice little convergence of some market forces at work, that support my claim.

1) Home prices have dropped, buy low sell high people.

2) It’s still a buyers market, and Sellers are nervous about getting their homes sold. I am still seeing seller concessions, and well negotiated selling prices are around 5% or more below asking price (around me that is).

3) Interest rates are still low (and probably not going to get lower )

4) And the economy appears to be doing just fine.

What does this mean? Essentially, now is the time to buy low, negotiate lower, and pay the least amount for the money borrowed to do it, while you still can. Sounds pretty good to me.

My sincerest thanks to Jeff here for the opportunity to spout my propaganda, and to Mary for being the brains (and looks, and hard work, and organization) behind the whole operation. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the swappers. Happy Holidays to all, and happy home hunting.