The Rescue/Bailout Bill is signed by the President today! It has come just in the nick of time and it will serve as a temporary "Band-Aid" to our financial markets. We still have a long road to recovery but this is a step in the right direction. As the news settles in this weekend, we should start to see the fundamentals on the poor economic data that has been released over the last couple of weeks tto rickle into our bond market and improve mortgage rates. For now, I am cautiously floating in hopes rates will improve more over the next week or two because everyone has ignored the economic news since we all were waiting to see what our Government was going to do. This week, we saw 159,000 being lost, personal income/spending is lower, and inventory levels being hit on the manufacturing side, which indicates a poor economy. What completely baffles me is that consumer confidence was once again a higher reading than expectations! I just cant begin to think Americans honestly have higher confidence especially when we have lost so many jobs and guess what? We are not spending as much nor earning as much as we did before! I swear, sometimes I think these numbers being released are just a way to make people feel better and are not true indications as to where things are heading. Give me a break - high consumer confidence - in this market??? The only people I know who have confidence are the buyers who bought a house for 20-50% less than what it sold for 2 yrs ago! My tip for the week is to be very cautious of all offers being made! If you are the listing agent, ask the buyer to talk to your preferred lender just to give you and your seller additional confidence that the buyer is qualified and can get a loan through the lender they may have chosen. Do your homework on a home. Check all realistic comparable’s (ask appraisers to run comps for you), check for title to make sure it's not clouded, etc. These are the things I am hearing that are preventing transactions from going through. We ARE closing deals and we ARE going to survive this challenging time!!! You just have to work with the true professionals in our industry. Randy Reed 303.524.9191