Fritz Pfister

Holy Cow! What a week. The saying; besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play, doesn’t even begin to accurately summarize the news from the past week.

Front page news today, Davlin reveals budget deficit of up to nine million dollars. This only three months removed from raiding future CWLP profits, and raising the telecommunications tax to cover a projected twelve million dollar deficit. OOOOPS boss the deficit is a little more than we figured, only by 75%!

Let’s pretend the city budget is a car. The city’s car was examined following an accident by the city adjuster who stated the vehicle had a damaged bumper only to go back and say after further review the vehicle is totaled! This smacks of financial ignorance, incompetence, or both, and a lack of honest disclosure to aldermen and citizens. Then to play the doomsday scenario, like governor Quinn, children will go uneducated, people will die from a lack of police and firefighters, only insults our intelligence! What the hell ever happened to competent government? Oh that’s right, the county just balanced their budget without tax increases, or job losses. There is hope. There are examples of good governance.

This is not to mention the city may have to borrow up to forty million dollars to pay a developer that the city harmed as a result of a strictly ill advised council vote to deny a development that had met all the legal requirements. Brilliant!

Last Sunday the deadline passes again to forge a state budget. Now the scare tactics fly, because don’t you know the only solution ever, is to raise taxes? The dependent society will suffer if we don’t take more of your money! This after the state increased spending 33% the past six years while revenues were falling. Will the adults in state government please stand up?

Then there’s the price of oil temporarily jumping above $70 a barrel yesterday. Gas prices knocking on the $3 a gallon door. Doesn’t anyone remember the $4 a gallon gas price as the tipping point that sparked the biggest pull back in consumer spending in decades? Here we go again. Our governments solution? Build windmills, and solar panels, whatever you do don’t expand drilling of our own oil to lessen dependency upon foreign oil. Just ignore the fact that 90% of our industry and transportation systems are dependent upon oil! Better yet let’s tax industry on top of the rising fuel prices and call it, oh…. cap and trade!

Then there was the good news that only 320,000 jobs were lost in May. Why is that good news? Because it was less than what the experts predicted. Ask any of the 320,000 who lost their jobs how good that news is. Oh, and by the way unemployment is now up to 9.4%, a 25 year high.

More great news from the Federal government, the IRS reported tax revenues for 2008 were down 30% or by $184 billion. At the same time the federal budget deficit for this year is now projected to pass two trillion dollars quadrupling last years record half trillion dollar deficit. Can you say tax increase? Can you say inflation? Can you say higher interest rates? Well it has begun, mortgage applications fell 16% for purchases and refinances following a half percent increase in mortgage rates this past week.

Now the rest of the story. Local home sales in May of 323 were down by 81 or by 20% from 404 in 2008. The median sale price was down 7.56% in May erasing the 7.7% increase in April. Sales pending finished up 7.5% which will hopefully lead to an increased number of closed sales in June.

Through the first five months of 2009 closed home sales are down slightly over 10%, sales pending down just under 2%, and the median sale price is up 1.2%. The number of new listings taken by Realtors is down 18.5%, however the 1692 homes listed for sale today are only down 14% from last year on this date.

Sorry if this all sounds like doom and gloom, but my job here is to tell you the truth. Anything else would not provide you the basis to make good informed decisions when you go to buy or sell a home. Unlike say for example whoever is in charge of the city budget.

However ladies and gentlemen there is good news. With the precarious state of the economy, it doesn’t appear selling a home in the foreseeable future is going to get any easier. So beginning next week Let’s Talk Real Estate will be expanded to two hours. The need for accurate information and timely advice will be paramount to local real estate consumers.

There will be new features on the program designed to help you. We will have more guests, experts in their fields. We will have a ‘Meet the Client’ segment where you can hear of the experiences from folks just like you who have recently bought or sold a home. There will be a new segment called ‘Why You Should Buy My Home’ where we will have home sellers in studio to share the benefits to you for buying their home. After all who knows their home better? There will be ‘Fritz’s Forum’ where we can discuss a wide variety of topics including but not limited to government actions that affect your daily lives, the value of your home, and the ablity to sell your home.

Be sure to tune in next week as we begin our new expanded format. Tell your friends that are in the market to buy or sell a home. This program is dedicated to helping you, your friends, and your family.

The opinions expressed are solely those of Fritz Pfister, and not RE/MAX Professionals of Springfield or RE/MAX International.