SantaFe.com

Ask a dozen Wall Street analysts this month where and when the stock market will bottom out and you’ll get twelve different answers. Jumping in as a buyer at any point in time is a gamble, particularly if short term timing is the objective. Real estate suffers from similar speculation: Does the market have further to fall, or is this the time to step up as mortgage rates continue to fall and inventory has swelled to inviting proportions (from a buyer’s point of view). Just as the stock market is a mosaic of multiple components (retail, energy, tech, manufacturing, transportation…) and not...

Friday, April 11, 2008 at 11:52 AM
by Michael French • SantaFe.com

In John Perkins’ 2004 best seller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, we are treated to factual stories of United States agencies repeatedly pulling a fast one on developing nations. The shell game is deceptively simple: convince a third world government it needs infrastructure to grow its economy and meet the needs of a swelling population. Loan that government more money than it needs for schools, roads, hospitals, oil refineries and mines. Charge a healthy interest rate, and stipulate that construction and operations must be contracted out only to U.S. companies. Fast forward a few...

Friday, March 14, 2008
by Michael French • SantaFe.com

Inman News, a highly regarded real estate news source, recently interviewed Sam Sebastian, director of classified advertising at Google. Sebastian spoke of the continued migration of off-line real estate advertising (print, radio, television, billboards, etc.) to online, whether it be Google, Yahoo or Craig’s List, national marketing sites whether independent or associated with brand name brokers, and niched, city-centric sites. Sebastian predicted that in the year ahead, until the real estate market stabilizes, major brokerages will take money off the advertising table, put some of it in...

Monday, January 28, 2008
by Michael French • SantaFe.com

Santa Fe is no different than most real estate markets across the country—whipsawed by the credit crunch brought on by loose lending standards, buyers waiting for their homes to sell in other cities, prices to continue to correct in Santa Fe, and a Fed worried about recession one moment and inflation the next, and increasingly, stagflation. Against this macro backdrop of confusion and occasional chaos, we’ve seen a year of swelling inventories in Santa Fe in most price ranges (particularly under $750,000), many price reductions, and a twenty-one percent decline in unit sales, although the...

Tuesday, January 1, 2008
by Michael French • SantaFe.com