ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN 2009

The market and our economy are kind of like the weather in Michigan; if you stick around long enough, things will probably change.

On the heels of the subprime credit crunch and the worse plunge in the Dow since 1929, who would have thought that we would enter the new year with a stock market surge and mortgage rates at low enough levels to stimulate another refinancing boom? But that’s what we had last week as the Dow crested 9,000 on January 2 and mortgage rates dipped below 5%.

What that all means for the balance of what will probably turn out to be a long tough year in the real estate and the financial markets is unclear at this time. But what is clear is that the contrarians who had the courage to buy into the stock market during the past 60-90 days of 2008 when everyone else was selling are looking and feeling pretty good right now.

At some point in the not too distant future, that comment may be made about those contrarians who decided to take advantage of the lowest housing prices and interest rates of the past decade by purchasing real property during the downturn in the real estate markets.

One can never be guaranteed that a purchase is being made at the very bottom of the price curve, just as no one can ever always buy low and sell high. But I feel confident in saying that those buying now are far closer to the bottom than the top. And the market can turn in a heartbeat. Just look what happened to the stock market last week.