I turned 40 last Friday which prompted me to take a step back this week to evaluate not only the last year of my thirties, but in addition what the nation went through in 2008. Quite a ride for the housing and mortgage markets – seeing the financial pendulum swing almost completely side to side for mortgage, and all the way left for housing.

What do I think is going to happen for both housing and mortgage in 2009? Good things for both I truly believe, although more positives for mortgage than housing in the first half of the year.

Certainly we’ve already started to truly benefit from these incredibly low interest rates on the mortgage side of things – consumers are flying off their proverbial housing shelves to take advantage of these great rates – and through refinancing, I believe we’ll all soon start to feel the economic benefit of these transactions.

For housing it’s a different story but hopefully one which ends on a much more positive note than 2008 did. We still have a supply and demand issue, both nationally and here in the triangle. The good news for us here in NC is that because we’re on the leading edge of the recovery scale, we’ll start to feel the momentum of the housing train leaving the station well before the majority of the nation – and that jump on housing recovery, combined with the continued flow of new home buyers to the state due to our state being a destination location, as well as excellent local economic fundamentals, and of course less expensive credit in the form of mortgage rates gives those credit worthy borrowers more bang for their housing buck. Housing starts nationally have been on the decline for months which is good news for putting a dent in those terrible housing glut statistics we’ve seen each month for quite some time now.

Consumer Confidence quietly seems to be ticking up each month – certainly the drop in gas prices has helped, and while we’re still in quite devastating economic times, 2009 it seems will be bringing us many new outlooks on life, ranging from political to economic.

So enjoy the holiday week – thank you for reading my thoughts this year, and I hope that you’ll stick around for more real estate information, as well as the debut of a video version of my blog coming in the first quarter of 2009 here on WRAL.com.

Have a safe and wonderful New Year’s Holiday and here’s to reading you all again in 2009.

Sincerely,

Jeremy M. Salemson
CEO
Corporate Investors Mortgage Group, Inc.
www.cimginc.com