One thing I love about real estate is that everyone is absolutely interested in what the market is doing, both when it's up and/or down. I appreciate the fact housing stats are of such interest. Often, however, the stats and media clips don't tell the whole story and you can often get conflicting opinions...ask 10 people and get 10 different answers!

Are sales down so far this year? Yes! But...2007 was a record breaking year and we would be hard put to maintain that pace, so I find the short media clips often don't express the full perspective.

In our 905 Region, sales in May were down by 9% but up 4% from 2006! That's not exactly a market crash. Also important to note, the average price was up 7% from the same time-frame in May, 2007.

Some areas actually experienced an increase in activity, driven by supply and demand. And yes, we have had a couple multiple offer situations recently, even in the higher end homes. We do have increased inventory...up 11% compared to a year ago. From my perspective, this is a good thing. It results in more choice for home buyers and has a postivive effect on the quality of available listings. In this balanced market, home-sellers have to be very concious of their asking price. The appraisal skill sets of the Realtor are extremely important to the potential Seller.

And one last statistic...my team had a 46% increase in booked business as of the end of the first quarter this year over the same period last year. We thank you all!