Is it picking up???

Today the Dow Jones posted the largest one day rise in its history. This is great news but it also posted its largest drop last week. If we can stay in the black then we have something to look forward to but this roller coaster is taking peaks and valleys like we have never seen before. I talked to a few agents last week that expressed that their activity on their listings have really picked up lately. I posted a thread earlier mentioning that the National Association of Realtors posted a report that showed that written REPC's picked up in August when they were expected to drop. This is all great news for the housing market because it shows that maybe we have flattened out. I don't think any of us expect the housing market to jump up but we are all wondering if we have hit the bottom. The bailout was supposed to ease credit concerns and the stock market bouncing back in record numbers hopefully shows that those concerns have somewhat been alleviated for the time being. While this seems to alleviate investors concerns, in the mortgage industry we have not seen guidelines loosen up, in fact we continue to see the already strict guidelines tighten even more. My email is continuing to be flooded by lenders dropping loan programs and lenders requiring more and more disclosures to be signed throughout the entire loan process. This can make buyers and loan officers extremely frustrated. Hopefully the gains in the stock market that we saw today will not be erased by future speculation.

I created another blog for real estate professionals, builders, developers etc. Please take a moment to view the blog and read the material. It is a shared blog so if you would like to post your thoughts let me know and I will add you to the blog. I hope you had a great weekend. Enjoy the Monday Night Football game.