Welcome to Central Illinois!

Welcome to my Web site!  As of July 31, 2010, the Champaign County Association of REALTORS Multiple Listing Service (MLS) database had 2,039 active residential listings. After a spring rush of tax credit fueled sales activity, the subsequent months of 2010 have thus far been quite slow, even compared to 2009, which was already three years into a soft local real estate market.

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 are afflicting many other areas of the country.  Because our market did not experience out of control appreciation and speculation, we are experiencing much more modest downward pressure on price as compared to 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 are sitting at all-time lows, 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: