Recovery

Last night we went out to dinner with one of my husband's college friends that is moving to the area. He and his wife looked at houses in our neighborhood until sunset and then we all met up. Over dinner I gave them the rundown on the neighborhood in general and different pockets.

They told us the size and square footage of a house they like and my husband and I exchanged looks. We told them the price seemed high- the price is a few thousand more than what we paid last July for 900 less square feet. We suggested a few different areas of the neighborhood for them to consider and then moved on to other topics.

When we got home I pulled up a local real estate search engine, plugged in our zip and asked for results less than $200K. Last year at this time there were 10+ pages. In January when I was freaking out a bit about home values it was the same thing. Last night- 2 pages. Only 78 houses in our zip are on the market. Down from more than 500 a year ago.

The news is a buzz with economic indicators that are improving. I'm happy that unemployment is down, but I'm even happier that my neighborhood is no longer hemorrhaging and our home value seems to be stabilizing.