John Koppelmann

I am sure President Obama would love to have a simple soultion to our country's economic crisis, as we would all love for him to solve it.

One possibility might be very close to him and he doesn't even know it.

If he takes into consideration the effect his wife Michele has on the buying public everytime she wears something new from J. Crew he may solve the problem.

It seems that J. Crew stores and their website sees huge increases in traffic for what ever she is wearing. Apparently this happened while she was in London and when she made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

With this thought in mind, we need the President to arrange for the media to cover Michele buying a house and then buying a Chrysler. If we see the same results that J Crew saw, we would be out of the housing crisis and the government wouldn't have to send any more money to Chrysler.

Just a random thought as I wonder what one thing will bring this country around.

After looking at the stats for our area for the 1st qtr, there is good and bad news. The good news is that properties in Monticello city limits saw an increase in average sale price of 8% over this time last year. There were fewer homes sale, but the days on market was less than last year. This might be proof that First Time Home Buyers are realizing this is a great time to buy.

However, Rural Monticello, Lake Shafer and Lake Freeman are still seeing decreases. But 1st quarter stats on lake property can be skewed a bit due to what kind of winter we had. Although, I don't have an explanation for the Rural Monticello market. It will definately be an area to watch going into this next quarter.

Today, I had a gentleman stop in my office that was trying to get people to voice their opinion on Healthcare Issues. His firm then takes all the signatures and sends them to each persons' congressman.

A question he asked was "If your congressman walked in right now and gave you a minute of his time to listen, what would you say to him about health care reform in our country?"

I thought for a moment and replied that I would say that even though healthcare in our country is a very important issue, I want you to drop the party lines and fix the economy. Don't play blame game, don't throw money at particular companies or institutions and hoping that magically fixes it. But at the same time don't sit on your hands and over analyize it either."

There is a fix out there. I don't know what it is. No one person does. But there are a lot of smart people in Washington. They wouldn't be there if they weren't. If they would work together, and leave the party affiliations and the personal agendas at the door, they can fix it.

That's my thoughts.

Now that 2008 is behind us, it is time that we focus on 2009. I don't believe that we have seen the end of the current economic situation, but I do feel that we will see the bottom this year. Meaning that we will eventually be able to put this behind us and move on.

In my next few posts, I will touch on how my local markets, including the Lakes, faired in 2008.

Just to let everyone know, I am no longer with Zook Realty. I decided to change direction and effective Oct 1, I opened Koppelmann Real Estate. I have a small office in downtown Monticello. This gives me the chance to do what I truly love with real estate - work with sellers and buyers. This change will also allow me to better service my clients. I am very excited with this new direction and will hopefully update my blog more often as well.