Welcome to Central Illinois!
Welcome to my Web site! As of May 2, 2008, the Champaign County Association of REALTORS Multiple Listing Service (MLS) database had 1,834 active residential listings. This represents a decline of about 200 from our local market's all-time high in the last half of 2007, but it still represents an uncommonly high inventory for this market.
Our local real estate market is exhibiting its typical seasonal changes: more listings hitting the market and many more buyers getting into the market. The Multiple Listing Service indicates that the number of new listings has closely tracked the number of listings that have sold or otherwise gone off the market, which has resulted in an extremely stable level of inventory for the last couple of months.
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 is afflicting some other areas of the country. Because our market did not experience out of control appreciation and speculation, we are largely immune from the downward pressure on price that is pushing back against the markets that did have the huge run-up.
Our local economy remains exceptionally robust, and continued economic worries at the national level might well contribute to decreases in mortgage interest rates over the next several months. And while our market is not undergoing any sort of fire sale, the next several 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 new licensed sales partner, Lori Bellafiore. Please contact me anytime with questions or if you are contemplating the sale or purchase of a home in the area. Thank you again for your visit to my site!