Those of us who live in Northwest Washington woke up to snow this morning, and it hasn’t stopped snowing yet. We are expecting from 4 to 8 inches. I’m sitting in our office and I can watch the snow piling up around us. The big talk in the office today is whether to stay, or to go home early. Those who live at some distance have already headed out the door. I managed to get out of our driveway, go downtown, and get back to the office in good shape. I also don’t live that far away, so I’m still thinking of staying until later this afternoon.
Our office was also buzzing about the $838 billion recovery/stimulus bill that was just passed by the Senate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). We are excited about the $15,000 credit for home buyers, and are looking forward to finding out more about it. Of course, the gears of Congress move slowly and now the bill has to go through the grinder one more time (at least I hope it is only one more time) to reconcile the House and Senate versions.
Our governor Chris Gregoire has a plan for our state. I am most interested in the Jobs Plan. Her plan is supposed to jump start our economy. We’ll see. I know that our cities are already planning ways to use the Federal money we expect to receive from our portion of the stimulus package. Our poor county is at 9% unemployment right now. When people don’t have jobs, they certainly are not going to purchase a home. When people are afraid and unsure of the future of their jobs, they also will not make a huge financial commitment to purchase. So creating jobs — good thing!
I listened to Tim Geithner this morning as he announced his plan for the rest of the TARP money, and also his plan to work in partnership with private money. I like that he renamed TARP to FSP (“Financial Stability Plan”) as that name makes more sense to me. Mostly I was listening to hear what was said about housing and mortgages. I am going to need to see what he said in writing to get a better idea of what his plan entails, but I was glad to hear that there is a plan to work with existing mortgages. We need to stop the bleeding. I really dislike having so many bank owned homes on the market, and it isn’t much fun to deal with bankers when you represent the buyer. The banks are rather cold and assume they have all the power, so the buyer has to do what they say. I also heard a rumor that many banks are holding on to foreclosed properties rather than put them on the market, and that makes me nervous. Suddenly these banks may flood the market with more bank owned homes.
The other aspect of all of the ARRA and the FSP I like is the fact that the administration is going to have a couple of web sites set up so we the people can monitor how our tax money is being spent. One is recovery.gov for the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the other is for the FSP at financialstability.gov. There is already some good information on the Financial Stability web site, but the Recovery web site is waiting for the final passage of the bill.
Here in Mason County our housing market is very slow. The month of January the number of residential properties sold was hardly enough to mention. Our agents have been looking forward to spring because we are optimistic people, and have a lot of faith that if we can just get to spring, our housing market will come back to life.
