The Real Estate Market is Back

Boy oh boy the real estate market is back with a vengeance. All of my architect and engineering friends are busier than right before the 2007 meltdown. Building additions, knockdowns, and the like are flooding in. It seems that everyone just woke up this year and got busy.

Flippers are back

My real estate investing friends (aka Flippers) are snapping up houses at county court houses for pennies on the dollar, cleaning and fixing them, and then flipping them back onto the market. My Realtor friends are busy as well too, with new showings and new sales. Everyone seems to be happy and whispers of "the good times" are back again.

While this scares the bejesus out of me, it might not be that bad...yet. There's been such a shadow inventory of properties on the REO market that banks are starting to sell at lower prices just to get them off the books. Demand is creeping up and everyone is hoping to unload their inventory. It should keep house prices in check until the excess inventory is gone.

Financing is ridiculously hard to come by, so that will keep a lid on things too for a while. The only access the average American has is to do cash-out refi's again and there's been an uptick in that activity too.

While we are in NO real estate bubble yet, the market is definitely heating up in my neck of the woods.