My Realty World

Today I took some time just after 3pm to finally finish my Christmas Shopping. I figured I would stop by Sports Chalet and few other stores along the bypass. I have to say I was really surprised that on a Wednesday afternoon I pull into The parking lot at Sports Chalet is packed. The store is busy and lively full of last minute shoppers like myself and store employees ready to help us in any way they can. As i left the parking lot I really took notice to the packed lots along Lone Tree and all the people on the road. It seems like over the last month every time I have had to go store its been packed with holiday shoppers. As I wait in line i see the sales stack up in front of me there is some serious money being spent. This has to be a good sign for our economy. When people are feeling the ability and ease of mind to go out and spend their hard earned income we are on the way to a more normal economy.

The way our economy works relies on so many different factors, index’s and measurements. The biggest indicator for me is to see how consumers spend their money. If we are feeling fear of not being able to pay our bills we save and cut costs. But if we feel we have job security, a bounce in our 401k accounts and a few dollars in our savings, we as a nation go out and spend money. We spend it everywhere and almost on anything. This helps our economy get jumped started again, we need more goods to sale which requires more people to gain new employment or gain more hours at work ending furloughs and creating overtime again.

Seeing all this today just reaffirmed for me today that our economy is resilient and is working thru its issues. This is huge for our area and our home prices. We here in Brentwood were some of the fastest and hardest hit when the Housing Bubble Burst. But over the last 18 months I have watched home prices here in town stabilize and slowly start to rise a bit. Theres less foreclosures on each block, home are being sold generally within 30 days of coming on the market. These are all great things for us. As our home prices stabilize more people are going to feel safe with buy creating more demand. As more banks feel political pressure to work with homeowners and modify or streamline the short sale process we will have less supply.  We all know if we cant supply or demand, a premium is put on things and that increases their prices.

Lets all look around our town and see the pride slowly come back by having a stronger and more stable population that creates jobs here for local business,schools and charities.

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