Alyse Sands

There is so much to do for the art afficionado in Nashville, TN, otherwise known as "Athens of the South".

The Frist Museum shows famous collections such as Georgia O'Keefe and the Masters of Watercolor, features Jazz in the lobby and live bands the first Friday of each month. The Cheekwood Botanical Center offers art showings whil walking through their beautiful gardens while listening to live music. The First Saturday Art Crawl is a monthly event where art (and wine) lovers walk from gallery to abundant gallery in downtown Nashville. The Parthenon, a full scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, located at Centennial Park in midtown Nashville, is also an art museum.

One can also attend the Nashville Film Festival which showcases independent International and local films at the Green Hills Theatres in mid April. Downtown is the Tennessee Performing Arts Center which is also the home of the Nashville Ballet, Nashville Opera and The Tennessee Repertory Theatre and also downtown is the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. On a smaller scale you can catch Improv and local theatre regularly at small, black box theatres around town.

These events only scratch the surface as there are showings at the many schools and Universities and, of course, live music everywhere you go in Nashville, as well.

Alyse Sands

Well, here we are in a down market in Middle TN. It's the first one I've seen in my 15+ years of residency. The fact that our region never saw through-the-roof prices is what has saved us from plummeting to the depths that other areas of the U.S. are experiencing. Home values have come down perhaps 10-20%, depending on the locality.

I've always regarded Real Estate as a long-term investment...like the stock market. Since I've been in the Real Estate game I've seen people buy a home at market value, only to sell it 2 years later. Even in Middle Tennessee's prior, gently upward market, selling a home purchased at market value in two years never resulted in a monetary gain. If you don't have to sell right now, hang onto it and revisit the idea in another year.

I hear people saying that the market hasn't hit bottom just yet. Some are waiting just a bit longer to see what the market will do but how will they know when the bottom hits? There's no way to know for sure until it starts going up again and Middle Tennessee values are not experiencing huge jumps so, if you are planning to buy a home, go ahead and pull that trigger! Get a good agent who will show you lan to stay in the house for a while and your home will become an investment.

When I was growing up my parents taught me to save my money. Lessons like saving our allowance vs spending it were learned. We were taught that you don't buy a house until you have saved enough for a down payment. I put down 20% on my first home and all of my properties.

So many people I know don't seem to have been taught how to budget their money. Friends of mine who are in fear of losing jobs still spend freely on gifts and entertainment while I watch my spending.

A few years ago lenders were giving (yes, giving, as it turns out) money to everyone, regardless of credit scores. Buyers who should never have been purchasing homes were doing so and at 100% or higher LTV! Sellers were paying the closing costs (or they were being added into the purchase price) so these buyers had nothing to lose. As a Real Estate agent, I was supplied approval letters from the buyers' lenders and it wasn't my job (or business) to question whether they could afford it. (Agents are not permitted to see the income information of our buyers unless they show it to us). I advised my buyers not to spend the highest they were approved for but. ultimately, it was their decisions to make.

I remember buyers wanting higher priced homes they saw on the internet that were more than their 42% ratio (the highest % of the buyer's monthly income to use for all their bills supposedly allowed on FHA loans) and lenders stretching their ratios, sometimes to 50% (somehow) at the buyers' requests. I anticipated that it would come back to bite the lenders in the butt...but then, so many of us were. We sold homes because that's our job and we trust that our boss (the buyer) is responsible enough to know what they're getting into.

So here we are back to before mortgage leniency. Gone are the Stated Income loans of the past for self-employeds. Gone are the the very high LTVs (loan to value=percentage of the loan to the sales price). For a while we could easily get an 80/20 loan (with the 20% loan being the downpayment for the 80% loan). New guidelines are popping up that are making it difficult, even for buyers with excellent credit, to buy a home because they don't have large amounts of liquid cash.

It has always been very important to be pre-approved for a mortgage. It's even moreso now that the guidelines are tighter. It would be a great loss of time and heartbreaking to have fallen in love with a home, only to find that you're unable to purchase it because of some new stipulation.