Many homeowners over the years have seen their property taxes go up, especially after the sale of a house. Once a home was sold, the new tax assessed value was always ratcheted up to very close to what it sold for. Now many homes are going down in value. Now when a home sells for much less than...

12/08/2009

It All Depends on Who's Adjusting the Data and What The Agenda Is

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When you look at a graph of temperature over a period of time, especially when it's in a big time scientific report like the IPCC climate change report, you just assume that the data is accurate and has been picked over by many fellow scientists. Scientists don't lie. They have a code. They let ...

12/07/2009

Market Stats. What Are They Good For?

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I had a fellow agent ask me if I had a number for what kind of price change we are seeing in our market. He wanted a simple "headline" number that he could tell his client. Something like house prices are down 10% over the past year. Most people want a simple number and they don't want too many...

12/07/2009

Atlanta Real Estate Market Statistics. Housing Stats for 28 Market Areas

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I made some improvements to my Atlanta housing statistics. I wanted to smooth out the data somewhat in order to see the trends better. Now along with the monthly data points going back to January 2002, I created graphs with a 12 month moving average which shows the trends better. For those numb...

12/07/2009

A Good Heart and Always Does the Right Thing. That's My Boy.

6 Comments

Sometimes you wonder if your children are on the right track. As they get older, you see less and less of them in action with others. My 10 year old son got his report card today. He had amazing grades, every subject was 96% and above. But the item that made me feel the best was the comment ...

12/07/2009

Are Deteriorating Houses Good for the Economy?

3 Comments

Will the economy get a nice boost when homeowners finally need to fix their houses? At first glance, this sounds reasonable. When houses start to need repairs, people have to spend money to get them fixed. Roofers make money. Home Depot makes money and it all looks really good. It's almost so...

12/04/2009

It Just Doesn't Add Up.

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Declaring "our security is at stake," President Barack Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the long war in Afghanistan Tuesday night, nearly tripling the force... ...and will cost $30 billion for the first year alone. That's one million dollars per soldier in the first year. Obam...

12/03/2009

Are Low Interest Rates Really Good for the Economy?

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It seems like a given, if you want to improve the economy you should persue low interest rates. But in another chapter of Econmics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt takes a close look at this subject. This whole subject has been so appallingly confused in recent years by complicated sophistries and d...

12/03/2009

Bernanke Gets a Tough Performance Review by a Couple of Senators

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Today Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, had his Senate confirmation hearing. I wasn't able to watch it live but I caught a couple of YouTube videos covering Senators DeMint and Bunning's questioning/grilling of Bernanke. DeMint brought up three of the four duties that Bernanke said the...

12/03/2009

Do We Want Jobs or Do We Want Production?

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Jobs, jobs, jobs. That's the big buzz word today. Many are looking to Obama and Congress to do something about jobs. But is employment an end to itself or should we be more concerned about what is actually being produced. Henry Hazlitt sets it out clearly in his Economics in One Lesson: Primiti...

12/03/2009