New Year's Eve 2010, a look back, a look ahead
At holidays, I usually see what I wrote the previous year but it turns out that I didn't write a blog post on New Year's Eve last year so the next best thing was finding my post for New Year's Day 2010.
It was kind of surprising.
There was a link to an excellent WSJ article chronicling the the decade of adventures and misadventures of real estate during the boom and bust of the 2000's and the title of the post was very much in the spirit of the times, Happy New Year and good riddance to the aughts. (emphasis added)
See, 2009 was not a very good year for almost everyone in real estate or many other businesses.
But 2010 was fantastic for me personally!
I forecast cautious optimism for the Charleston real estate market for all the usual reasons, Charleston is a very desirable place to live and many retirees and others tired of the cold and snow are moving here. Our job growth despite the difficult economy remains strong. Cost of living and taxes are reasonable.
All that continues to exist today.
I forecast higher interest rates to be a certainty but instead they dropped all the way to 4 percent before making the round trip back to 5 percent or so today but as I reminded readers then and now, mortgage interest rates are still very attractive by historical standards. Well, I hope I'm just as wrong again by saying higher interest rates are a certainty for 2011 but more than likely, they should range from 5% to 6% this year which is still really good.
High inventory levels continue to remain a problem as there are simply too many homes for sale in Charleston. And it would be nice for the national economy to strongly recover and have unemployment rates drop significantly because after all, you do need a nice, secure job in order to buy a home.
But what I didn't expect with my cautiously optimistic forecast was to personally have one of my best years ever in 2010 thanks to many very nice clients entrusting me to help them buy or sell a home this past year.
So hopefully, 2011 will be more of the same and that would be just great.
But enough about me, I hope that 2011 turns out to be everything you want and more.
Happy New Year!