The grass is turning green and the leaves seem to be popping out almost overnight these days.  Definitely signs that Spring is here.  The month of May has also begun to show some signs of life in the real estate market.  We are “beginning” to see some activity from people who are probably being motivated by the nicer weather and the slow but steady increase of some optimistic signals coming from the financial markets.  I don’t mean to hint that things have gotten back to “normal” with regard to the real estate market, but we are at least seeing signs that things may not be as bad as some would believe and the so called “bottom” may have finally arrived.  It will be interesting to look back a few months down the road and see if May was the beginning of a turn around.  Ironically, one of our next struggles is dealing with Buyers’ numerous questions about the current market and its effect on prices.  Many markets are seeing a substantial reduction in the “average” sale price being driven in some cases by bank owned foreclosure properties and short sales.  Even though we don’t see a great deal of this type of foreclosure activity in our market, many Buyers have taken note of this and most astute Buyers today will ask to see recent comparable sales, when they do get to the point of having some interest in a property.  In some cases it is difficult to find much of anything to give them in terms of sales over the last 4 to 9 months, which only tends to heighten their concerns about where the true value of a property really is and if this is in fact the right time to buy.  We will also be facing that problem now with lenders requiring appraisers to use only the most recent sales on financed transactions and sales from last year in many cases won’t qualify.  So we’ve got some serious issues to be dealing with but I am convinced that our market will continue to weather the storm better than many other markets across the country.  We’re committed to doing everything we can to help you get your property sold, hopefully in the very near future.