Carmel and Hamilton County Real Estate Information

Our weather has broken and sunshine is a welcome reprise from the bitter cold. As our good fortune would have it, our nice weather is going to stay for the next few days. Try and take advantage of some of Indianapolis' great parks and trails during this time.

Last week was a steady week for sales, 177 homes went under contract in Marion County and 62 went under contract in Hamilton County.

The "Fix Housing First Act", which is part of the Senate's Economic Stimilus Bill is now in front of the Senate and waiting for approval before being sent to the House.  This is an Act that would have far reaching effects and would certainly go a long way towards ending the free fall of our nations housing industry.  Passage of this Bill by both the House and the Senate would be a giant step towards ending the country's current economic woes.  In my mind this part of the Bill is the first real attempt thet I have seen towards an actual solution for the housing market woes.  This bill includes a $15,000 tax credit for all homebuyers, the reduction of interest rates on 30 year fixed mortgages to 4.5-4% and other important conditions that would quickly stimulate the housing market and this country's economy. Confusing? I don't think that it will be too confusing once it is said and done but if you want to read the bill (All 680 pages) you can view it by clicking here.

Good Monday Morning!

What a great game yesterday. I hope your Super Bowl Sunday festivities were quite enjoyable.

Sometimes the most unpredictable things happen: Last week brought the Indy area the most snowfall in 13 years and our Pending Home Index shot up by nearly 16%. In Hamilton County, 75  homes went under contract last week while Marion County saw 199. These are the big jumps from the past few weeks. Homes are starting to sell and interest rates are still low. If there is anything we can do to help, let us know.

Have a great week!

Check out our new ad running this week in Indianapolis, Carmel and surrounding areas.

Mortgage rates continue to be at their lowest point in nearly 40 years. A big question on everyone’s mind is ‘Should I refinance?’ We have a great article on the subject that covers the ins and outs of a potential refinance, click here: SHOULD I REFINANCE?

The real estate market stayed steady last week as Hamilton County saw 55 homes go under contract and Marion County reports that 177 homes went under contract last week.

If you are considering the purchase of a new home we can tailor specific search criteria to you and set you up on our automated system. Also, we have a complete list of bank owned homes, short sale homes and some extremely well priced homes that will give you the opportunity to make purchase deals that don't come along very often.  Please get in touch for further information.

My phone has been ringing off the hook from home owners asking me if it is a good time to refinance their existing home. For many of my clients the answer is YES and they should refinance especially since many of the mortgage loans available offer a fixed interest rate ranging between 4.5% to 5.5%. However, there is a large segment of clients who should not refinance.

 If you are thinking about refinancing I would like for you to consider a few questions BEFORE you contact a mortgage lender:

Do you plan on staying in your home long enough to see the long term benefit of refinancing?

Do you have the necessary equity and will your home appraise high enough to support refinancing?

Do you have the cash in savings for the closing costs that are associated with refinancing? If you are planning on adding the refinance closing costs on top of your existing loan balance, how long will it take for you to recoup these added costs and get your loan balance back to where it is today?

Most people want to refinance for one of two reasons:

They want to shorten their loan balance and pay the home off sooner which is a great reason. Taking your existing 30 year amortization and refinancing to pay it off in 15 years is a powerful way to build equity quickly.

They want to reduce their monthly payment at the cost of starting a 30 year loan all over again. You can reduce your monthly payment with this method but typically you are going backwards and lose equity for at least a couple of years until the savings from the refinance get you back to where you were prior to the refinance.

Here is one of the quickest ways to determine how many months it will take before the cost of refinancing is beneficial and I have created a basic example:

If you are refinancing a fairly new home loan that has an existing 6.5% fixed rate 30 year mortgage with a loan balance of $100,000 and the current principal and interest monthly payment is $632.07. The new interest rate you can obtain by doing the refinance is 5% fixed interest rate for 30 year and that would give you a new payment of $536.82.

The closing costs to complete the refinance would be $2,500. (this amount is different in each market).

The monthly payment savings would be $95.25 which is the difference from $632.07 less $536.82 = $95.25.

Based on this $95.25 monthly savings it would take a little over 26 months of making the monthly payment at the new lower 5% interest rate before you would recoup your $2,500 closing costs.

Before any of my friends, customers or clients contact a lender to discuss refinancing PLEASE contact me by e-mail or phone me at (317) 989-0074. I can help you determine within just a few minutes and over the phone if refinancing is a good move for you by using a specialized refinancing computerized calculator. For those of you who are not planning on living in your current home much longer you may want to visit the link below:

www.INDYhomeALERT.com

Jason O'Neil

Forbes Magazine recently named the Indianapolis Metropoloitan area as one of the 25 strongest housing markets in the country.

Quoting Forbes:
To compile this list, we asked Moody's Economy.com to compile a list of the country's real estate markets that are nearest to recovery. Moody's looked at the country's Census-defined metro areas--including metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas--with populations over 500,000, and prepared forecasts through 2011. They then compared them to prices in the second quarter of 2008, which are the latest figures available, to calculate how far prices will likely fall before reaching bottom.

This is fantastic for the area and a welcome piece of good news in time of generally not so good news. These types of accolades reaffirm what those of us who live and work in the Indianapolis metropolitan area already know: we live in a great city!

You can view the entire article here:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/07/housing-cities-realestate-forbeslife-cx_do_0107realestatestrong.html

Do what Warren Buffet renowned investor does. His philosophy is when there is greed be fearful and when there is fear be greedy- a contrarian strategy. With the press filled with fear, the weak will retreat from the real estate market allowing savvy investors to pick up the pieces and make higher profits and gains in the years to come while those that buy into the news media will be complaining in the future how they lost and missed the great market we will someday see again.