Mark Hite

Having attended the NAR mid year meetings in Washington DC this week, I thought it was important to share that Realtors do much more than assist in the buying and selling of real estate.

I belong to three orgainzations 1-Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors,2- Tennessee Assocation of Realtors and 3- National Association of Realtors, all three of which are involved in lobbying our elected officials in relation to personal property rights and issues that afftect the housing market. For example, we visited Capital Hill this week to talk about preserving the Mortgage Interest Tax deduction for home owners as well as maintaining existing limits on loans so that there are more available mortgages and to protect the FHA program's current downpayment % at 3.5%.

Why is something like this important to you?? Well if some in congress had their way, it would be a minimum 20% downpayment to purchase a home. For the average American Family that takes 14 years to save up....can you imagine having to wait 14 years before you could buy your first home or what would your tax return look like if you suddenly lost the mortgage interest tax deduction you are currently claiming?

So the next time you hear about a realtor convention, changes are, we are not just taking a nice trip which we can write off, infact we are spending our dime to travel and stand you for YOU-the home owner, because home ownership matters in this country!

The Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors today released the sales results for December 2010 for residential real estate in it's service area. In summary, home sales declined by 8.5% when compared to the same month in 2009. This decline represented another month of declining home sales, which has been the case in our market since July of 2010. The market sales were stimulated by the Federal First Time buyer Credit in the spring of the year and my calculations indicate that we have finished the year with approximately a 3% increase for the total year in comparison to 2009.

The Median home price for December increased by 6.6% when compared to the same period a year ago, which is good news for the market. Again, my calculations indicate that the total year will show a price correction of less than 1% when compared to 2009.

One of the most common questions I hear as a Realtor is "How is Real Estate in Chattanooga?" This is an excellent question, since real estate is a LOCAL business that varies by market and even segments of a market. To answer that question today and going forward, I will publish portions of the press release of home sales from the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors.

- "December 22, 2010 - The local real estate market continued its year-end lackluster performance according to data released by the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) of the Greater Chattanooga Association of REALTORS®. In November of this year, Southeast Tennessee and the Northwest Georgia area saw the sale of 371 residential units, a 13.1% decrease compared to the previous month's sales, and a decline of 27.1% from the same period of last year." The article continues "Median price in the greater Chattanooga market declined 3.8% from the same period twelve months ago, and a saw a sharper drop of 8.6% from only a month before.

The news however is not all gloom for Chattanooga, as Year to Date sales are running 4.1% ahead of the same period for 2009.

So now you know, how are Real Estate Sales in Chattanooga!

Seems that people are struggling with "why should I buy today" particularly in luxury homes. There have been some large price corrections in Chattanooga Luxury real estate, both in single family and luxury condos. These corrections have not been as severe as some parts of the country, but no less painful!

A "jumbo" loan is the most common method of purchasing a luxury home. A "jumbo" is classifed as being over $417,000 in amount. These loans have had less attractive interest rates and much higher down payment requirements than the FHA loan programs that you have heard so much about. FHA home loans in the Chattanooga TN real estate market go up to $271,000 and have down payments as low as 3.5% vs 20% for jumbo loans and this week we saw FHA rates as low at 4% for 30 year FIXED RATES. WOW!

Finally some good news for jumbo buyers-we saw jumbo rates down to 5% yesterday-still with 80% loan to value, but the rate is unheard off. So if you are considering buying luxury or refinancing your existing home...NOW is a GREAT TIME TO BUY OR REFINANCE!