Sam's TEAM Blog

This elongated Spring of 2008 has now stretched to Memorial Weekend. 

Today's high temperature didn't break 60 if the weather reports are to be believed....but believable weather forecasters are another oxymoron aren't they??  Imagine, if you were as inaccurate in your occupation as these electronic prognosticators.........

This year's inclement weather is the most daffy since my arrival in Portland in 1978.  Two years later, 1980, the eruption of Mount St Helens provided unusual weather, but that was tangible and understandable.  This Spring is just weird.  Well it is an election year, so maybe that's the answer.

Lawns seem longer than normal this year, the result of grass being too wet on weekends when mowing has been most appropriately accomplished.  That's my excuse anyway.

The Rufous hummingbirds are setting the aerial survey stakes.  This morning, two males were performing the acrobatic gymnastics in the front yard with a massive flowering cherry tree as the prize for the winner.  No word from the two birdhouse occupants on their judgement of the aerial combatants.

Today lunch with a new Realtor referral partner.  The chat??  Housing inventory, time on the market, price reductions, seller participation, credit score and loan guidelines tightening or at least in flux.

We covered other topics too, the news media pounding downer news - seldom if ever noting the positive items or reporting stories from all over the country but not locally originated, news developed on the cheap, but little expertise;  futile open house sitting over the weekend, potential buyers - but "we've got to sell our house first", "I'm not certain the market's bottomed out", "we're just looking right now".

We've become a society of sheep, no matter affiliation, creed, race, occupation, whatever, we're walking or running over the same ground, over and again.  Lots of knowledge, yet precious little wisdom.

Consumers are inundated by the news, snippets really, about this bad, that bad.  Heck, it's all bad.  Doesn't matter the subject.  It's just bad.  Bad, bad, bad.

In the Portland area, we're a comparative oasis in a vast sea of declining house values.  Yet we've declined, so little in comparison.  Portland area homes have "fallen" about 1/20 of the drop in the housing debacle's poster children of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Florida.  That's about 1% decline if there was a decline.

Yet we've the same emotional disorder - the sky is falling.  Well, it hasn't.  But more on that in another session.

It's a familiar story - a client for whom we just completed a refinance of her home has referred a friend to me for assistance.

The referral is gratifying, knowing that my TEAM's performance exceeded a client's expectations and now desire a dear friend to have a similar experience.

This new client will be a first time homebuyer having been a renter of many years, and understandably dubious of owning a home.  She'd convinced herself she was better off renting.  She was especially casehardened after years of renting and hearing numerous myths, and not just about homeownership, but of credit scoring, credit card use, and the list goes on.

Answering her questions one by one, it became apparent my new client wasn't aware of the tax benefits of homeownership - that mortgage interest and property taxes are deductible, for just a bit more than her rent, she could have been buying a home of her own.

One by one we're eliminating the falsehoods, even some downright lies.  We're also rectifying the twisted "rules", which border on gossip they've been so badly mangled on the street, by the media, by someone's misreading of a story.

The lesson, the know it at work spewing out credit advice isn't a professional and while they may be right, may in fact be wrong.... totally and completely.  Consult with a professional in credit or mortgage financing.

After all, don't avoid checking with a professional about a loan because of something you've heard.  If you do, then you have taken a NO, from someone who couldn't say "YES, your loan's approved!".