Welcome to Central Illinois!
Welcome to my Web site! As of June 22, 2010, the Champaign County Association of REALTORS Multiple Listing Service (MLS) database had 2,035 active residential listings. After a spring rush of tax credit fueled sales activity, May is saw a drop of about 55% in the rate of home sales as compared to April. This is less of a decline than I would have expected for the weeks immediately following the end of the credits.
If you did not qualify for the tax credits, or if your timing didn't make it workable for you, you should find a very friendly market in the next several weeks as you face much less competition from other buyers on tight tax credit related deadlines. Sellers, expect very slow traffic for awhile, followed by a gradual return to somewhat normal levels of buyer activity as we get farther past the end of the credits.
If you are new to this area, we here in Central Illinois--mercifully--did not have much of a real estate bubble to burst. The ratio of housing prices to incomes was never high enough to cause our market to depend on potentially shady financing designed to bootstrap buyers into homes that they could not afford. We therefore are not now seeing the sort of mortgage meltdown and free-falling values cycle that is afflicting some other areas of the country. Because our market did not experience out of control appreciation and speculation, we are largely immune from the downward pressure on price that is pushing back against the markets that did have the huge run-up.
Our local economy, while certainly seeing increased unemployment and other challenges, remains relatively robust. Mortgage rates remain low and FHA and conventional financing remains readily attainable by financially responsible buyers with good credit. And while our market is not undergoing a fire sale, the next couple of months should provide an excellent buying opportunity with many properties from which to choose and plenty of sellers eager to get homes sold.
Feel free to browse the contents of my site and to meet my licensed sales partners, Lori Bellafiore and Mike Vila. Please contact me anytime with questions or if you are contemplating the sale or purchase of a home in the area.
Finally, I urge you to spend less than two minutes checking out the locally produced video below, which showcases many of the attributes of which our local community is proud: