Happy New Year. What will 2010 bring?

First off, Happy New Year to all. I'm probably the last to wish it to you, and by now, hopefully the last.

Let me say, the worst part of any new year or new decade is putting the wrong year. You all must know the feeling of putting 0_ before everything. Now I've got to deal with putting a 1 then a number and no zero at all. Doesn't anyone feel bad for the zeros of this word? Anyway...

When the tides started to turn people generally felt that we'd be out of this financial mess by 2010. Even I thought things would be getting better. I'm not going to be totally negative. I feel that we're starting to see a little sparkle of light coming over the horizon but it's far off and slow moving.

There are a ton of new rules and forms that, at least for the Bear clients, are useless. I was reading one, and on it the form explains a 30 year fixed loan four different ways. These are supposed to protect borrowers not confuse them more. Whatever the changes are, they're just changes and like I said, Bear clients always know whats going on so I'm not worried just annoyed. But this is all for another time and post.

Rates are swinging like I wrote about earlier. A few weeks of the rates slowly moving up on speculation that Fed money would dry up has done a 180, as predicted, when over the past week the Fed has promised billions to GMAC and I'm guessing (totally guessing) that you'll hear that the Fed will continue to buy MBS.

Also, as everyone (except for people in the commercial business) they're getting hammered. An post on Calculated Risk had a good chart seen below about strip mall vacancies. You don't have to be a millionaire to own a strip mall and many small / family businesses occupy these types of spaces. Even in a bad neighborhood a strip mall is where locals go to get food, laundry, cell phones, local goods, etc. These are the kinds of "real world" figures that I'm always saying that should count more into figuring out the economics that are happening.



We've seen rate come back down of their recent swing up. I believe that we'll have a nice swing down similar to what happened a month or so ago. So anyone who hasn't locked in yet, now is a great time to get ready for when the rates do take their dip.

I hope that we're seeing positive numbers coming up in 2010. It seems that we will. But as anyone can tell you, the bubble we experienced took a long time to grow and pop. It will take a long time to get back to normal. I remember from 03 - 07 each year I'd get someone to come into my office and say, "this is it, its over. Get out of the business now while you still can." Not until the end of 2008, was it that we really started to feel the effects of the recession that loomed. If you tak even half of that example, we've still got another year to go until we start to level out and start to rise. Again, the rise is going to be very slow because of the new rules and regulations. These items would have been good while times where good so things didn't get out of control. But now they seem to just be getting in the way. Again, something for another post.

These last two post haven't been the Bear's greatest. I'll keep working on it. There is just so much that is going on even in this bad economy, I just want to share all the grim reaper news and ideas that I have. It's just that to see a little chance of recovery, true recovery, in a year or so is nice. I sure hope we don't find a way of messing it up.