Market Update August 3rd thru the 10th

The market was pretty much the same a s last week in Herndon/Oak Hill. We had a total of 92 net single family homes on the market going into this weekend. There were 7 new listings with 7 listings getting contracts - another great week. I have noticed one trend in the last 60 to 90 days and now we have another issue this past week that will, to some degree, affect our real estate market. A pricing disparity has appeared between the over $500,000 market and the under $500,000. I know that this is a result of the sub-prime market imploding. Most of the homes under $500,000 are foreclosures or are pre-foreclosures. They have been dropping in price over the last several months but the non-foreclosure homes are not and they are getting fairly stable prices for their homes.  There are some foreclosures on the market 40,000 to 50,000 less that identical houses that sold a month ago - but, even at these prices, they are not selling. It looks a little odd. This week, I heard that the lenders are not providing stated income loans anymore - which makes sense to me. At the same time, though, the jumbo loan rates jumps a percent because, according to the news, they want a higher interest rate because of the issues with the sub-prime market. This all seems like a knee-jerk reaction - but only time will tell. You would think this would affect our inventory and prices would soften. I would think, my lowly opinion, that the inventory would have to get to the 120 to 130 range before we would see the impact locally. I think the next couple of weeks will show an inventory increase if we are going to weaken again - so far so good.  The real estate market is very hard to predict. I guess when someone is able to fairly predict the stock market, we will be able to predict the real estate market. I yearn for the stable market of 1992 to 1999. I did not know then that I had it so good. Have a great day.