We all know the Real Estate market has cooled down and most houses are not flying off the market like they once did a few years ago. That’s not news! As a Buyer Specialist, I work exclusively with buyers and come across some misconceptions about buying a home in a slower market. One of those [...]

6 Reasons to Drink Green Tea

The steady stream of good news about green tea is getting so hard to ignore, that even java junkies are beginning to sip mugs of the deceptively delicate brew. You’d think the daily dose of disease-fighting, inflammation-squelching antioxidants — long linked with heart protection — would be enough incentive. But [...]

According to The U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the average renter accumulated a little over $4,000 in net worth whereas homeowners earned an average of $184,000.
Those figures translate to an additional earning of $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year!
Read that again, if you rent you are only accumulating $4,000 in net [...]

Existing Home Sales increased 2.9% in February, ending a six-month skid for the figure. The annual rate came in at 5.03 million, solidly above the expected 4.85 million level. Overall, sales were up for both single-family homes and condos/coops.
Best news of all, the inventory of existing homes is declining. The overall supply fell to [...]

Congress extended the tax law that allows you to deduct PMI on your tax return. Homebuyers who itemize and have adjusted household incomes of 100K or less can fully deduct the PMI payments made. The deduction is phased out for annual earnings between 100K and 110K. For PMI to be tax deductible, [...]

Was just bragging on St. Louis and then saw another study…that said we are top 10 in pollution…see below
St. Louis is known as the Gateway to the West. But, it’s still near many of the east coast’s coal-fired power plants, said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung [...]

Eventful.com recently revealed which cities have the most going on, providing a valuable insight into the character and vitality of each area. They listed US cities by the number and type of local events in cities with a population over 100,000. St. Louis ranked in the Top 25!
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago [...]

A couple days ago I mentioned that we are down about 500 realtors in our ranks in the St. Louis area. Thought you might want to know what the status of realtors nationally.
The National Association of Realtors expects membership rolls to decline this year for the first time in a decade. Ouch.
We ended [...]

I had a closing this week…actually two closings this week. Closings are a beautiful thing. They are great for the buyer, great for the seller, great for the realtor, a real happy ending. I like all my closings to be happy joyous events where I’ve taken care of every little detail and I now [...]

Our St. Louis Association the Multiple Listing Service serves 5 Board in St. Louis and surrounding area. As of March 1, 2008, there are 10,919 realtors in 2008. That is down, but only slightly from 2007 In 2007, there were 11,405 of us. So we have lost 486 to the downturn [...]