Elliot Sirota

Windsor, CT has 140 homes listed today with 18 of them new listings for the daily period 4/9/2009

I guess if you have money and want to purchase things before the market turns around?

Get ready to blow the cobwebs out of your wallet! Sadly, someday this recession is going to end.

After 17 months of steep decline, both the president's Council of Economic Advisors and the Federal Reserve now believe the economy will begin to recover sometime in 2009.

Great news, to be sure. But it's also a warning to consumers: The deals you're seeing on everything from houses and cars to televisions and furniture won't last forever. Luckily, for a host of goods and services, the sale of the century (literally) is still on.

The reason is simple: no buyers. Personal savings in 2008 were nearly six times greater than in 2005, amounting to $191 billion or 1.8% of the nation's disposable income. In 2009, annualized savings for January and February exceeded $450 billion, or more than 4% of disposable income.

For those feeling bold enough to bargain shop, opportunities abound. Some deals, like housing and automobiles, might be obvious, but others, like diamonds, might not be.

Big Ticket Items

At the top of the list: housing. This may be the best time in a generation to buy a home. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, fourth-quarter 2008 prices were down 25% from the four quarter of 2006. The stimulus bill Congress passed in February includes an $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers. According to bankrate.com, average interest rates are beginning to dip below 5% for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage.

More good news for consumers: Automakers had a miserable 2008. Auto demand is down by approximately 33% since October and dealers have excess inventory backing up and bills coming due. It's a good time to buy.

Incentives from manufacturers have "probably never been as strong as they are today," says John McEleney, a multi-franchise auto dealer and chairman of the National Auto Dealers Association. If you've got good credit, you can expect 0% financing and cash rebates as high as $6,000.

Another deal? Diamonds. Anyone in the market for a something sparkly will find prices down 14%, on average, since their highs in mid-2008, according to Ken Gassman of the Jewelry Research Institute. Gassman says more expensive diamonds have seen even greater drops. A pristine 4-carat diamond that went for $70,000 per carat is now selling for $51,700 per carat--a 26% discount.

As a previous business owner in CT I always wondered why the BBB would give some businesses a satisfactory rating and others an unsatisfactory even when both were not members? So if you pay the annual approx $500 fee for a small business then you get a positive rating even if you have complaints, as long as you respond to them. That does not seem fair.

From the Hartford Courant today! 3/12/2009

The Better Business Bureau in Connecticut has quietly stopped giving letter grades to more than half of the businesses it monitors -- reversing a controversial practice instituted by the national organization.

The shift, made here and throughout North America, comes only a few weeks after the national BBB announced a radical change from its longtime practice of rating businesses either "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" to issuing letter grades from A+ to F.

The national organization said that it was instituting the new letter-grade ratings to provide a quick snapshot of businesses' reliability for the millions of consumers who regularly rely on its reports to decide whom to hire.

But the Jan. 6 change was criticized by a couple of consumer columnists, including me, because it appeared to unfairly reward dues-paying "accredited" businesses at the expense of good businesses who decided against paying hundreds of dollars (or thousands, depending on their size) in annual BBB membership fees.

CT and specifically Hartford county foreclosures are down in January and February, in fact almost 20% down. Maybe some banks are actually helping people? Could be, as stated below it is still up in the western states, Florida and spreading to the midwest! New England has remained steady. We don't see any up trends but maybe not getting a lot worse!

AP
Foreclosures up 30 percent in February
Thursday March 12, 6:55 am ET
By Alan Zibel, AP Real Estate Writer

US foreclosures rise in Feb. from month earlier and remain 30 percent above last year's levels

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite halts on new foreclosures by several major lenders, the number of households threatened with losing their homes rose 30 percent in February from last year's levels, RealtyTrac reported Thursday.

Nationwide, nearly 291,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice last month, up 6 percent from January, according to the Irvine, Calif-based company. While foreclosures are highly concentrated in the Western states and Florida, the problem is spreading to states like Idaho, Illinois and Oregon as the U.S. economy worsens.

"It doesn't bode well," for the embattled U.S. housing market, said Rick Sharga, vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac, a foreclosure listing firm. "At least for the foreseeable future, it's going to continue to be pretty ugly."

The rise in foreclosure filings came despite temporary halts to foreclosures by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and major banks JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America. Those companies pledged to do so in advance of President Barack Obama's plan to stem the foreclosure crisis, which was launched last week.

Two states that contributing to the increase were Florida and New York, where temporary bans on foreclosures ended.

But other states are moving to enact similar measures. On Wednesday the Michigan House approved legislation that would give homeowners facing foreclosure a 90-day reprieve. The legislation now goes to Michigan's Republican-led Senate, where its future is unclear.

While the number of foreclosures continue to soar nationwide, banks have held off listing properties for sale, Sharga said. There were around 700,000 such properties nationwide at the end of last year, making up a "shadow inventory" of unsold homes that could drag the housing crisis out even longer.

"It's going to take us longer than you might anticipate to burn through he inventory of distressed properties," he said.

The results highlight the challenge ahead for Obama and his economic advisers. The Obama administration is aiming to help up to 9 million borrowers stay in their homes through refinanced mortgages or loans that are modified to lower monthly payments.

Still, the faltering economy, driven down by the collapse of the housing bubble, is causing the housing crisis to spread. Nearly 12 percent of all Americans with a mortgage -- a record 5.4 million homeowners -- were at least one month late or in foreclosure at the end of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's up from 10 percent at the end of the third quarter, and up from 8 percent at the end of 2007.

The RealtyTrac report said more than 74,000 properties were repossessed by lenders in February as the worst recession in decades, falling home values and stricter lending standards continue to sap the U.S. real estate market.

Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida had the nation's top foreclosure rates. In Nevada, one in every 70 homes received a foreclosure filing, while the number was one every 147 in Arizona. Rounding out the top 10 were Idaho, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Oregon and Ohio.

Among metro areas, Las Vegas was first, with one in every 60 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing. It was followed by the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area in Florida and five California metropolitan areas: Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Riverside-San Bernardino and Bakersfield

Windsor, CT is a great town with that small town feel. Homes are abundant and priced right to sell. if Interested in real estate in Windsor or Bloomfield please call me at 860-922-3016 or visit my website at

www.elsells.com