A Refreshing Report on the Status of Real Estate

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Commentary by James A. Crumbaugh III

RISMEDIA, April 9, 2008-I’m going to buck the system: Everything I’m about to share with you goes against what you keep hearing and reading in the media.

First however, I have to share with you where and how I’m getting my information. Almost two-and-a-half years ago my partner and I sold our local real estate company. When we sold the company we signed a five-year non-compete clause for almost all counties in Florida south of I-4, with the exception of some inland counties.

Since real estate is the only business I know and I couldn’t open another real estate company locally, and since I love Punta Gorda and didn’t want to move, I decided to start a new real estate company. Our new real estate company, Allison James Estates and Homes, one of the fastest growing virtual real estate companies, is open in California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Texas, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky and Northern Florida. By the end of the year we’ll be open in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, New York and New Jersey.

We have a corporate office; with a call center here in Charlotte County, Florida, and what we do is place over 2,000 calls per day to Realtors around the country, to entice them to join our company. As a result, we have a lot of in-depth and very real conversations with Realtors from all across the country.

These Realtors range from the very best in the industry, who are still closing more than 10 sales per month to the struggling Realtor. By the time a Realtor joins our company we’ve probably talked with him or her a half dozen times.

Every Realtor we talk with is telling us the real estate market has improved – from more showings to more sales, and sometimes those sales have increased dramatically. We’ve all heard that you can make numbers say whatever you want them to say, but I will go on record as saying we have passed the bottom of the real estate market.

This is what we’re hearing from every Realtor we talk to in every state we call. In California alone we have on-board with our company Realtors from a broad cross-section of the state; from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco to San Diego. It is the same in most or our states, so what I’m hearing are not localized, it’s a general consensus.

In some markets we’re already hearing whispers of the asking prices of real estate escalating. These whispers of the real estate market improving nationally and of prices starting to climb will translate into a much healthier real estate market within the year.

I’m hearing some very promising things about our own local real estate market. I have an acquaintance who sold a smaller older home in Punta Gorda Isles and when he did, he figured he took an $80,000 loss. However, he turned around and bought a much larger and newer home in Punta Groda Isles, and figured he got that home for $250,000 less than he would have 2 years ago.

This tells me two things:

1.) Buyers have realized that there are some terrific prices available on our waterfront
2.) We may have had an over-adjustment on our waterfront property.

I also recently heard another great success story involving a Realtor handling a local project. All in all, the real estate market is showing the first signs of a turnaround throughout the country. This will continue and eventually the media will start to report these success stories and once again we’ll have a healthy real estate market.

For more information, visit www.allisonjamesinc.com.

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