IT’S AMERICA’S TIME TO SHINE

If you’ve been noticing the headlines recently, you’ve seen that some European countries are going through extremely difficult economics problems. The headlines you’ve probably seen the most have been about Greece. Their government spending was way out of whack, and their economy is paying the price. 

The other countries having hard times are Portugal, Italy and Spain, and when you add Greece, the initials for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain spell out PIGS. You may have seen this term in the news. 

Why do we point this out?  Why is this at all relevant to selling homes and getting mortgages for homebuyers?  

The reason we find this relevant and interesting is that the PIGS countries are just starting to sink into their economic problems.  They’re going through now what we went through two years ago.  

They’re just starting to grapple with their problems, and we’re starting to come out of our recession.  

Two years ago a lot of Americans thought the world was coming to an end.  Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Indy Mac all failed, and AIG, General Motors, and our biggest banks had to get emergency financing from our government.  

Serious people on the news and in the newspapers would ask if the Bank of America would fail, and when questions like this can be part of our national dialogue, you know people are scared.  

Things are different now.  

We’re hearing more and more from Realtors that prices have bottomed out, and multiple bids seem to be coming back.  

We have seen headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle that a local company there was going to be hiring 200 new people and Chase had announced on its earnings call today that it is adding significantly to its work force. Finally, the stock market had a great 2009 and a huge first quarter, and history has shown that markets are a nearly perfect indicator of recoveries.  

Another good sign has to do with the Federal Reserve.  They’ve spent $1.25 trillion the past year buying mortgages to keep interest rates low and prop up housing.  They’ve pretty much stopped buying, and the sky hasn’t fallen!  From a historical perspective, current mortgage rates are still wildly low.  

Things could obviously be better, but when we look at the PIGS and their problems, we are reminded of how much better things are here. 

We certainly had our share of serious economic problems, but we’ve controlled some of them and are working our way through the rest.  

The economy is going to be just fine.

Thank you -

The ReadyPrice Team