Understand YOUR Housing Market

The most important thing to understand is that housing markets vary from state to state, town to town, neighborhood to neighborhood.  You can NOT get an accurate view of your housing market by reading national headlines!!!  If you live in Chicago, who cares what the housing market is doing in San Diego.  Concentrating on information about other markets is only going to cloud the accurate view of your local housing market.   

A perfect example is to look at the housing markets of Detroit and Las Vegas.  When it comes to depressed housing markets, they are two of the hardest hit cities in the country.  Now if we study their median house price, foreclosure rate and yearly sales figures, they're going to be completely different than Chicago's.  As you can see it wouldn't help to understand the housing market of Chicago by studying Detroit or Las Vegas.  The same can be said for even local neighborhoods.   It wouldn't make much sense to study the South Side of Chicago's real estate market in an attempt to get an idea of the housing market on the Northshore.

So, the key is to concentrate on your local area.  Look at what the housing market is doing in your neighborhood, your town and the surrounding area.  This will give you the best picture of what is going on and tell you the impact, good or bad, that the housing market is having on your personal home.

Don't let misleading information cloud your judgement on what is best for your real estate decisions.  Stay focused on your local area and you'll be well equipped in understanding the housing situation in the area that will affect you most; your neighborhood.