It's been an interesting couple of weeks in the real estate market. I've seen both some positive changes and some not-so-much.

You can certainly find many opinions floating out there about the future of real estate, but the truth is until people find jobs and businesses start to flourish, things are going to be crummy for a bit longer. I've read predictions for next year that between 4 million (Realty Trac) and 4.6 million (Moody's) foreclosures will be filed in 2010. Another challenge for 2010 is that mortgage guidelines are tightening. Fannie Mae just lowered the Debt-to-Income Ratio to 45% which means buyers will have to lower their expectations on how much house they can afford. FHA is expected to follow suit next month. This could also be viewed as a positive, however, ensuring that borrowers won't get in over their heads.

So what about College Park? You know, I've seen a lot of positive movement in our neighborhood in the past couple of weeks. More high end buyers are entering our market than we've seen in a very long time. There has been activity in the 500K and 800K ranges. There was a house that sold over one million last week and another just went pending. Good stuff! We're still hovering at 253 available properties and 56 pendings.

Rates remain under 5% on average, however, they rose last week to 4.94% on a 30 year and 4.38% on a 15 year mortgage.

Here are the recent sales in College Park:


SS = Short Sale BO = Bank Owned