One of our premier home inspectors just started a new blog. It is called Jay Marlette’s: The House Explained. We have used Jay for our home inspections for over 7 years now and because he is so technologically savvy it did not surprise me that he would start a blog. In fact, his current home inspection site (houseman.org) is one of the best home inspector sites in our area. It has online scheduling, which is great for both customers and agents.

I spoke with Jay about this new venture and I knew it could be a valuable resource, but I never expected such in depth articles. His posts really explain how different aspects of your home work. We are always saying that house construction and home improvement projects are not rocket science, but Jay’s writing and understanding of a home’s fundamentals is fantastic. I highly recommend Jay’s services as a home inspector, and his new blog. 

We all are concerned with the current financial situation. Yet, how has it affected our retirement and our savings. We can easily calculate what we have lost, but how much must we save to make up the difference. Even more important we all must know what we need to save every year so that we can live what we deem to be a good life. Do you really know what you need to retire? If you do have you been tracking how you will get there?

I just saw this interesting New York Times tool that can help you see what you are on track to produce. It’s free and is a great illustration of how many years our current recession may have put you back. It also could be an interesting tool to help you start thinking about how much is enough and what you need to save to get there.
 

Thanks woodlywonderworks for this Flickr Photo

Yesterday this was posted on MSN.com’s Market Dispatch… 

Freddie Mac this morning said that the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell to an average of 5.01%, with an average of 0.6 point for the week that ends today. That’s the lowest rate since Freddie Mac started tracking the numbers in 1971.”Interest rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell for the tenth week to a fourth consecutive record low due in part to the Federal Reserve’s recent purchases of mortgage-backed securities issued by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae,” Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac chief economist, said in a statement. “On Nov. 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced that it planned to purchase up to $500 billion of these securities by the end of June of this year. For the sake of comparison, there were roughly $4.7 trillion of such securities backed by home mortgages available as of Sept. 30, 2008.”  

As we enter 2009 I was struck by the amount of activity in the real estate markets. If this is any indication of what 2009 will look like then I expect refinances and purchases to boom in the first quarter of this year. In December we wrote 5 offers on different properties and all of them had multiple bidders. This is a big difference compared to December of 2008 when most agents had zero offers in contract. We are not seeing the over bidding that we witnessed at the height of the market, but Bay Area properties which are listed at market prices are selling quickly a bit over their asking prices. This December we witnessed homes in North and East Richmond, which were hammered by the liquidity crisis, snatched up in less than 3 days!

We are seeing cheep financing coupled with low prices that is driving buyers into the real estate markets. This is healthy for it is beginning to clear out the foreclosure and short sale inventory that has plagued pricing for the last year and a half. In turn we believe this shrinking inventory will stabilize prices and subdue the skewed deep discounting that is caused by the banks fire selling as a means to getting real property off of their books.

This is a fantastic buyers market, and thus we are seeing the frozen gears of the market begin grind into motion.It is anybody’s guess as to when supply and demand will stabilize and a more normal market will arise. Yet, the signs of buyers returning to the markets are a definite plus and the longer rates remain low, the better off our markets will be. For the foreseeable future this will be a terrific market for buyers to get great values.

2 nights ago I went to the Oakland Speaker Series for the first time. I listened to Fareed Zakaria speak who has been described as the most influential foreign policy advisor of his generation. It was very interesting to hear Fareed say that we live in some of the most prosperous times even with all of the current economic turmoil. He cited the lack of military competition amongst world super powers and the growth of capitalism and economic prosperity around the globe. He also said the amount of worldwide terrorism and death due to war has fallen over the last decade.

Then he made a point I never expected to hear from a CNN analyst embedded in a media centric culture. He first asked the question, so why are we all so scared? He then answered it by saying the news media now has channels dedicated to 24 hour coverage. He stated how they have the responsibility to fill all of the hours with content. Thus, we are constantly being bombarded with narratives that are not grounded in our personal realities. He used the weather channel as an example and joked about how you turn it on and they start talking about a storm in some faraway place that has no influence on your current situation. Yet, we sympathize with it and it affects our mood or the story we are living in.

Financial Ambition has long spoken about the false realities that the modern news media perpetuates and how it negatively effects our everyday actions. We have made these statements so that our readers and clients will not let the media influence their actions and decisions. We have witnessed that those led by the media’s narratives drift without strategic relevance for their own situations. When people accept the media’s narratives as their background thinking, it often causes action when observation or assessment would be more appropriate, or stagnation when action is imperative.

It was inspiring to hear a news media veteran illustrate and validate the media’s real purpose. Many people expect the media to tell the truth, when actually the media’s purpose is to draw in advertising dollars. So the next time you watch the news or read one of the many periodicals think about where the story is coming from. Are you listening to truth and reality or are you witnessing a story that has been manifested to trigger you to continue watching?

On a side note, I found that the Oakland Speaker Series is one of the best values in the Bay Area. For a small fee (on their web site the Oakland speaker series can be seen for $304 for 8 different events) you get access to some of the most influential speakers of our time. Some of the past speakers have been: Carly Fiorina, Robert Redford, Colin Powell, Tom Brokaw, Neil Armstrong and Alice Walker. I highly recommend it.