Each week I will start to post some random thoughts related to both the national real estate market and our local Philadelphia real estate market in addition to related thoughts about the economy, investing and so forth.

October flurry- I met with Jim Makara today on a home inspection in Old Kensington.  Jim mentioned that October was his best month EVER for home inspections.  He did 57 of them !! Wow !  This was more for Jim than any given month even in the heyday in 2004 and 2005.  On a side note, Jim is one of the best home inspectors in the Philadelphia area.  His company is Countywide Home Inspections .

Home Buyer Tax Credit Extension- I do not expect the extension to have a huge lift on the market November through January.  In fact, expect these months to be slow, maybe even VERY slow.  For the most part, I think that every first time homebuyer that wanted to purchase a property DID.  It will take a few months to gear this back up again which could make for a very busy spring.  Hear that sellers ??  Have your property on the market in January and February.  For more info on the credit, see this wonderful blog by Loreeno Yeo:

First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit Extended and Expanded to Include Repeat Buyers

Investors left out ? - I still wonder why there are no incentives for investors for non-owner occupant properties.  These are the ones that we need real stimulus as the financing is the hardest to procure !

Realtor.com -  It appears that Realtor.com is fading fast.  If you did not see the action in MOVE this week, I would check it out. (MOVE is the publicly traded company that owns and operates Realtor.com) MOVE got clobbered on a weak quarter as well as a sluggish forecast.  The value of enhanced listings on Realtor.com is not nearly as valuable as it used to be.  I am glad we decided to focus on other areas of the Internet for our Internet Marketing.

Investment Idea- There are many regional banks that are not carrying the bad loans... they have strong balance sheets and super management.  These banks will benefit dramatically from all the other banks that are going out of business courtesy of the FDIC.   Spot them out in you area and consider making an investment in them.  These stocks could easily double or triple in the next couple of years.  Jim Cramer wrote about this as well in "Getting Back to Even".

Customer Service- If you are a bank doing a REFI for a local Realtor, by all means give that Realtor customer service in terms of returning calls or emails.  Otherwise, you just lost a great referral source.  This happened to me recently.  It was frustrating, but I just took my business to a different bank.  Not just my REFI business, but all of the accounts of our main office / business as well.  And guess where those future referrals will be going ? 

Short Sales- I get at least one call a week from companies wanting to negotiate the whole short sale deal (saying I do not have to do anything) and of course they would be the buyer.  Every time I say I am not interested.  How can I tell my seller "Oh by the way, I know you hired me, but now I am going to have some third-party company negotiate your short sale for you.  Basically what they are trying to do is defraud your lender into giving them a great deal and bribe me to do both sides of the commission as well as the resale of the property".  Just watch, we will be hearing more about this subject in the future.

Please comment or elaborate on any or all of these thoughts !