Spokane, WA

It is like those extra pounds that seem to creep back every time you lose them. Slowly but surely.

Clutter. It seems to appear almost overnight, and when your house is on the market it can be deadly to a sale.

Here is the deal...buyers always tell me " they can look past it". But if the truth is known, it is the spic and span homes that sell first, I think even when buyers say they can look past it, subconsciously they can't. Once they go into house beautiful, they quickly pass on the cluttered home even if it is a better deal. I have seen this over and over again.

If your home is on the market- or you are thinking of selling in the near future, here is some advice.

GET A STORAGE UNIT AND PUT A LOT OF YOUR THINGS IN IT!

Store away EVERYTHING that you don't use on a regular basis. Store all of the smaller pieces of furniture that make your rooms look smaller.

Store ALL of you off season clothing, Christmas decor, and all the boxes you are tripping over. Once you get it out of the way you will have an easier time keeping up on the daily grind of papers, books, ect... that creep into our lives.

EMBRACE SIMPLICITY. Less is more when your home is for sale!

ASK FOR HELP! If you are like me...you have WAY TOO MANY THINGS. Ask a trusted friend to HELP YOU GET RID OF THINGS. If you need to- hire a professional. It will pay off!

HAVE A SYSTEM for the stuff and fluff that must remain in the home while it is up for sale.

THIS TOO SHALL PASS! Hang in there, once your home sells and you are in your new place, you can be as messy as you want to! :) It is only temporary.

THE SPOKANE RIVER IS INCREDIBLE ARE RUNS RIGHT THROUGH DOWNTOWN SPOKANE!

#6 on my top 10 countdown!

Feb 8th, 2010 Interest Rates Update-

Rates continued to be stable in the past week. Freddie Mac announced that for the week ending February 4, 30-year fixed rates averaged 5.01%, up from 4.98% the week before. The average for 15-year fixed rose slightly to 4.40%. "Rates remained relatively stable for a second week amid news of a strengthening housing market," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist. "Residential fixed investment rose for two consecutive quarters over the last half of 2009 following a steady quarterly decline since the beginning of 2006. Pending existing home sales rebounded by 1 percent in December from a record drop in November that was due in part to the original expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, according to the National Association of Realtors. Even more encouraging news came from the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, which reported that banks have generally stopped tightening standards on most types of loans in the fourth quarter of 2009, with commercial real estate as the exception."

Feb 8, 2010 Market Update

Last Week in Review...Not super pretty....not super period! Change, anyone?

"BOTH OPTIMISTS AND PESSIMISTS CONTRIBUTE TO OUR SOCIETY. THE OPTIMIST INVENTS THE AIRPLANE, AND THE PESSIMIST - THE PARACHUTE." G.B. Stern. And last week's Jobs Report had something for both optimists and pessimists, as the numbers were both good and bad...depending on which survey you looked at, and what numbers you focused on. The job market lost 820,000 jobs last month. Well not exactly last month. This number included the "adjustment of statistics" for the past year. In this column we will not get into how the government miscounts so badly. However, we will point out that it just makes the deep recession we are coming out of even deeper. Eventually we must replace all of these jobs and we have dug ourselves quite a hole to climb out of. Certainly this makes the jobs programs proposed by the Administration more likely to become law as the next phase of stimulus kicks into gear. And certainly, the fact that there would be such a significant adjustment is one reason the stock market became so volatile this week.

Thursday was particularly brutal, especially when we mixed in concerns about the debt of foreign governments. When you remove this big adjustment, the numbers for January were not all that bad. The loss of 20,000 jobs is not positive, but it still is much better than the hundreds of thousands of jobs we were losing just a few quarters ago. However, it is still a long way from recovering from seven million jobs lost. This does help by way of the fact that it takes some of the upward pressure off of rates, oil prices and other commodities, at least in the short-run. ----------------------- Another important note for the week - Pending Home Sales for December were up significantly from November's reading, and up a healthy 10.9% over December 2008, as homebuyers take advantage of today's low rates and tax incentives. And speaking of low home loan rates, the Federal Reserve purchased $12 billion in Mortgage Backed Securities last week, bringing the total to $1.173 trillion since the program began in January of 2009...which leaves just $77 billion in purchases to be made over the next eight weeks until the program ends on March 31st. While home loan rates improved very slightly during this volatile week - don't forget that when the Fed is done buying, home loan rates will be very susceptible to moving higher.

If you are looking for a job in Spokane Wa. check out this helpful website :

http://spokanehasjobs.com/

Where you can post your resume, view available jobs and employers, visit career resources, find career fairs, and post jobs!

Spokane is a wonderful place with 4 great seasons to enjoy!

If you are thinking of visiting Spokane, check out www.visitspokane.com

To view homes for sale in Spokane Wa and see all public Spokane MLS Listings visit my website at www.BethAnnHomes.com