"Forget stocks. Don't bet on gold. After four years of plunging home prices, the most attractive asset class in America is housing." (Fortune Magazine 3/28)

Excerpt from Fortune Magazine:

"If all the clamoring you're hearing about housing has you totally confused, join the crowd. One day you'll read that owning a home has never been more affordable. The next day you'll see news that housing starts have plunged to nearly their lowest level in half a century, as headlines announced in March. After four years of falling prices and surging foreclosures, it's hard to know what to think. Even Robert Shiller and Karl Case can't agree. The two economists, who together created the widely followed S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price indices, are right now offering sharply contrasting views of housing's future. Shiller recently warned that the chances were high for a further double-digit drop in U.S. home prices. But in an interview with Fortune, Case took a far brighter view: "The lack of new home building is a huge help that a lot of people are ignoring," says Case. "People think I'm crazy to be optimistic, but housing is looking like the little engine that could."

To see where real estate is truly headed, it's critical to keep your eye firmly on the fundamentals that, over time, always determine the course of prices and construction. During the last decade's historic run-up in prices, Fortune repeatedly warned that things were moving too fast. In a cover story titled "Is the Housing Boom Over?," this writer's analysis found that the basic forces that govern the market -- the cost of owning vs. renting and the level of new construction -- were in bubble territory. Eventually reality set in, and prices plummeted. Our current view focuses on those same fundamentals -- only now they're pointing in the opposite direction.

So let's state it simply and forcibly: Housing is back."

 New Wave of First Time Buyers....get ready!

As we've noted consistently in the past few years, it's vital to understand that recovery from this market won't happen overnight.  What's more, the upswing won't be built on questionable lending practices, overextended buyers or insane debt-to-income ratios. Instead, it will be based on a combination of pent-up demand and demographics. And the youngest group of adults, Generation Y, will provide much of the spark.

Born between 1980 and 1995, the members of Generation Y -- also known as the millennials or echo boomers -- are like a pig in a python. Aged 14 to 29 now, they comprise a block of 74 million potential buyers, nearly as many as the 80 million baby boomers born from 1946 to 1964. When you think about the influence the boomers have had on virtually every aspect of society over the past 40 years, including the housing industry, it's fascinating to anticipate the impact of another wave that's just as massive.

The oldest millennials, now in their late 20s, are nearing the average age of first-time homebuyers -- the National Association of Home Builders puts it at 33 -- and many of them are already taking advantage of attractive buying conditions. They're moving through the household formation years of 25-44 and will soon replace Generation X (the 48 million people born between 1965 and 1979) as the primary first-timer group between 29 and 33. They will do so in much greater number.

 Please visit the Jeff A. Stokes website for information on buying and selling a home: www.JeffAStokes.com call today at (972) 393-9602