This is not your parents’ real estate market!

Just as Bob Dylan’s lyrics warned us decades ago, “The times, they are a-changin’.”

Having plied the real estate trade in the Toledo area for more than 4 decades and as co-owner of the region’s largest real estate company, I am more than a casual observer from a historical perspective.  Let me share just a few thoughts about how our industry and the local marketplace have changed.

As a kid Realtor, a 20% down payment was pretty much expected, unless you had such squeaky clean credit that you could pass the scrutiny to qualify for 90% financing, requiring Private Mortgage Insurance.  Anyone remember MGIC?  3% down payments have been common lately, and less than that leading up to the mortgage market disasters of a few years ago.

Many vivid memories come from the previous worst market I’d seen, the early 80’s when interest rates not only went double digit, they went to the high teens!  Do people understand today’s opportunities? Long term fixed rate mortgages have been found starting with a “3”!  The conventional wisdom in those early 80’s was that only a riverboat gambler would consider an adjustable rate mortgage.  “Wisdom”, a misnomer.

Long ago most sellers wouldn’t even consider FHA and VA offers, since they took months to close and appraisals typically came back with lengthy laundry lists of repairs if you hoped to close.  Now those loans make up the majority of mortgages!

And those “short sales” we hear so much about today . . . we’d never heard the term before.

Clearly, times have changed, but never before have I seen some of the opportunities that exist in today’s market.

I would be remiss in these musings if I didn’t end with additional lyrics from the song of singer/songwriter/philosopher/economist Dylan quoted above:

“Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call; Don’t stand in the doorway, Don’t block up the hall…”