John Newman

Wow, what a market? How is the market? UNBELIEVABLE. Buyers should be dancing in the streets right now. The opportunities are tremendous, in the past we have all heard about Sweat Equity, today you don't have to break a sweat to find instant equity. If you are planning on living in a home (not flipping the home) this is a great time to buy, especially in Anne Arundel County, MD. Here are two recent deals out of the hundreds available. There is a relatively new community in Gambrills, MD called Chapel Grove. This is a Winchester Homes community. These are upscale single family homes in the $600,000 -$900,000 price range. A Winchester Spec home settled for $720,000 in December, the list price was $869,000!! Wow! What a Deal!! That represents an 18% discount from list price. Could you imagine paying $150,000 less than your neighbor for the same house. What a way to meet new friends!

Another scenario, this is my transaction. New Construction once again. The builder had a spec home listed in Crownsville, MD for $549,000 my buyers contract was just ratified for $500,000 with $5,000 in closing help. The neighbor paid $571,000 with $18,000 in help for the same house in June. We need to educate buyers on why now is the time!!

If you would assistance in finding your new home in Anne Arundel County, MD or are looking for this kind of opportunity. Please contact me at www.THINKNEWMAN.com.

When it comes to marketing luxury homes we need to market the homes to the advisors of affluent buyers. In my previous career as a financial advisor it was my job to understand my clients finances implicitly. If my client was planning on making a major purchase, I wanted to be the first to know. Every listing I have, whether it is a luxury home or not is emailed to my network of financial advisors and they in turn emailed to their database of clients. Talk about viral marketing!! If you have a network of advisors imagine using that as a tool in your next luxury listing presentation. If you would like to learn more about networking with financial advisors, don't hesitate to email me.

If you are looking to buy a luxury home or sell your luxury home in Anne Arundel County, Maryland and would like more unique ideas for marketing your property, please visit www.THINKNEWMAN.com

Let me first start out by saying that this Blog is the my opinion and is not the opinion of Keller Williams or NAR.

When I was a financial advisor with Merrill Lynch we studied a lot of charts. I vividly remember charts of money flows into mutual funds. Money flow is the amount of money coming into or leaving a particular financial instrument. Simply put, every year mutual funds would have a positive or negative flow of money. If a fund had a bad year in terms of performance, typically they would have a negative flow the following year and if the fund had a good year in terms of performance, they would typically have a positive flow the following year. Makes sense right? If you were going to put money into a mutual fund wouldn't you look at which funds performed well the previous year? Well, that would have been a bad investment decision. Typically the funds that have the highest money flows in a given year have the worst performance the following year. (Obviously there are a few exceptions) What does any of this have to do with the housing market? PSYCHOLOGY,PSYCHOLOGY,PSYCHOLOGY. Typically, when the bulls are buying you should be selling and when the bears are selling you should be buying. The general public makes decisions based on emotion and the smart money makes decisions based on factual analysis. A couple of years ago, 5 out of the top ten best sellers at Borders Books were on the topic of how to get rich buying real estate. Don't we all remember this! Now mention to your friends that you are a Realtor or thinking about buying a house, what kind of response do you get? A couple of months ago I wrote a blog titled 'WERE ALMOST THERE' well I should've titled this article "WE ARE THERE" I am one of a few who actually believe that we are at the bottom of the housing market. Let me give you a couple of reasons why:

1) FOLLOW THE SMART MONEY- Why did Bank Of America decide to buy Countrywide? If Bank of America believed that the housing market going to get worse, would they spend $4 billion to buy them. Wouldn't they wait? Why is JP Morgan rumored to be acquiring Washington Mutual now? Look at this article which talks about Morgan Stanley http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKTFOoHM.Jww&refer=home in this article an astute real estate investor mentions that this may be one of the best times he has seen to buy real estate.

2) INTEREST RATES- Interest rates are low and probably heading lower. The economy has slowed to the poing that several large investment banks are now saying that we are in a recession. http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080109/usa_economy_goldman.html If we are in a recession the powers that be will be cutting interest rates to stimulate economic growth. If these banks are correct, and I believe they are, we could see mortgage rates drop even lower therby bringing more buyers into the market.

3) Affordability- This may be different in each market, but in Anne Arundel County, Maryland it is definitely a buyers market and prices are down about 20% from the peak in 2005.

4) Election Year- Our government and those jockeying for office would like to see an end to the housing crisis and will do whatever it takes to correct the situation prior to the election.

5) I Bought a New Home- I am actually practicing what I am preaching to my clients. I bought a new home in the last month. Not because I needed to move, but because I could not resist the opportunities that presented themselves.

I really believe that if your clients are considering the purchase of a new home. THE TIME IS NOW!! If we really want to help our clients we need to educate them and let them know that there may not be a better time to purchase that dream home.

If you would like help in buying or selling you next home in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Please visit my website at http://www.thinknewman.com/ and remember WHEN YOU THINK REAL ESTATE, THINK NEWMAN!