There is a buzz in the air in Brooklyn right now which seems to be pointing to a busy Brooklyn real estate market for 2009. With today’s swearing in of Barack Obama the predominant feel in Brooklyn is one of hope and excitement. I believe this will have a positive effect on consumer confidence, especially with regard to buying a home in 2009.

As I stated in my previous Brooklyn, NY regional blog entries, record low mortgage rates combined with the correction that has taken place in home prices over the past year makes for many opportunities for a purchaser to get a great deal!

So far in January the market has been brisk. We have had a great surge of online consumers making inquiries on properties listed on the major “online” real estate portals. There has been a big response to our open house marketing; we had one property in Park Slope where we had 25 home buyers show up in a two hour time period. As usual, motivated buyers and sellers (and dare I say real estate agents) are making deals happen.

The main thing I stress to my agents is to pre-qualify their homebuyers, make sure they are educated about monthly carrying costs and then show them every single solitary property that is within their price range. Do not worry about meeting the purchaser’s expectations; simply show them everything out there and then some. The serious buyers will then pick the home that best meets their needs.

We just finished compiling our numbers for 2008. Sales volume for my company was down, but only by 3%, which relatively speaking is great (teetering on awesome). This is due to the fact that

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I’d like to start out by saying that I’m honored to be here.  This is the first of what I hope will be many contributions to this great community. 

Apologies for beginning my stint here with a D.C.-centric theme but with January 20th rapidly approaching, we do feel like we’re the center of the universe.

I have a family friend, a young lawyer, who is now six months pregnant with her second child, who recently lost her job in New York City when her law firm folded.  She had very little warning and no severance pay.  Her husband works for Goldman Sachs.  I imagine that there are sleepless nights in that family.

Another friend worked for Lehman Brothers.  Before you picture her out on the street, it turns out that her entire division at Lehman was acquired by Barclays, so she is still gainfully employed.  But many of her closest friends lost their jobs and she reports that New York City has changed dramatically over the past few months.

Perhaps New York’s loss will be a gain for Washington D.C. and for the health of the D.C. real estate market.  According to The Washington Posts’ Steven Pearlstein, “The region should leverage the enthusiasm of the new generation of bright, young, ambitious people who will seek to come here. Continue reading this post

In the month of October 2008 there were about 750 real estate deals transacted in Brooklyn, New York. This is down about 50% from a year ago. Half of the neighborhoods in Brooklyn have also lost about 10% of their home values during the same timeframe.

I am not stating these facts to be negative, quite the contrary; I view this as a positive!

Remember, in adversity lies opportunity.

You see, what had actually taken place was a correction in the market. From 2000 to 2005 real estate prices in Brooklyn tripled and quadrupled or more in some places. It basically was becoming impossible for your average buyer to afford a home. Buyer’s pretty much had no choice but to boycott the market.

However, given that prices are down and interest rates are at an all time low,

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Market update provided by Wendi-Mae Davis Broker Associate/Real Estate Counselor at Connect Realty, Director of the California Association of Realtors (CAR), and Vice Chair Land Use/Environmental Committee

A quarterly Wall Street Journal survey of housing data in 28 major metro areas shows that the glut of unsold homes listed for sale is shrinking in most of them. Locally, in El Dorado County, the listing inventory has continued to go down for the last six months. Metro areas with the biggest drops in for sale signs include Sacramento and Orange County. Southern California saw sales jump 65% from a year ago—More than one-third of those sales were from foreclosures. In Sacramento, we saw sales go up 82% from last September with 64% of those being bank owned properties. El Dorado County sales are about 30% to 50% bank owned real estate.

Where Sacramento home prices are heading is tough to predict.

We have the election results, the U.S. government bailout program, the continued commitment of major lenders to modify thousands of existing mortgages, the law SB 1137 that went into affect on September 8th that slows down the foreclosure process. (Ask me for full details) And, of course, the stock market slide in October.

Ok, some good news and some bad so what happens next? That’s where the challenge of predicting the market comes in.

Click to learn more about Sacramento real estate and Sacramento home prices on HomeGain.

Click to view Sacramento homes for sale.

Read more real estate market updates

Now that the election is over and we know who our next president is going to be, we no longer have to listen to all the “hype” and focus on more important issues like what’s really happening with the real estate market here in Brooklyn, NY.

The fact is that even amongst all the economic turmoil as of late, the Brooklyn market is regaining its legs!

The primary driving force behind the real estate market in Brooklyn right now are first-time homebuyers who are taking advantage of the low prices along with near record low mortgage rates available. Many of these buyers could not afford to purchase a home in Brooklyn a couple of years ago, but can now fulfill their dream of homeownership. If you are a buyer with decent credit and a good job, it is still easy to get a mortgage! Buyers who have job security should be very motivated to purchase right now because they can use their strong qualifications to negotiate a better deal for themselves.

On a side note, inventory has gone down as of late due to sellers taking their homes off the market realizing that they cannot get the numbers they need. Other homeowners are taking a wait and see approach. This past weekend the buyers were out in droves, viewing open houses, and many have been leaving bids on the spot! Several of the open houses conducted by my office even experienced multiple bids during the open houses! This leads me to believe that

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Market update provided by Wendi-Mae Davis Broker Associate/Real Estate Counselor at Connect Realty, Director of the California Association of Realtors (CAR), and Vice Chair Land Use/Environmental Committee

In a nutshell, market conditions in Santa Clara County (inventory, sales and DUI) continue to improve. Inventory is 146% of the 8-year average. That is down from 220% at the end of 2007. Offers initiated have increased from the 55% range to 114%. The volume of initiated sales has stayed above 100% since August 9th. There are a still larger than normal number of transactions that are failing to close. Consequently, closings are still only at 80% of normal in Santa Clara County. DUI has dropped 310% of normal at the end of January to only 114% of normal. A first level corrected DUI to compensate for the higher than normal failure rate would increase DUI to about 130% of normal.

Remember a lower DUI is

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