As always, I am looking forward to seeing new faces and old friends this coming weekend. We are bringing some excellent single family home opportunities, and we have some property in the East Village project that is already leased so you can have a closing with no vacancy. Oklahoma City is still doing very well in home sales and appreciation. In fact, based on NAR statistics, Money Magazine in June rated Oklahoma City as one of the top eleven cities in the united Staes not experiencing a bust, and still growing. After the meeting ends on Sunday, I will be heading to Napa Valley for a few days before I return home to greet Hila Zakim, who runs ICG's Tel Aviv office.  We look forward to seeing you Saturday.

When I started with ICG in 2004 I was a busy Realtor. With ICG my work hours doubled and I did not have as much free time for leisure activities. Before ICG I played tennis 4 times per week and I played a pretty good game. After three years of laying off I just started playing again. I took two lessons on Thursday and Friday, and played 2 hours of doubles on Saturday. At the height of my game I would hit a hard first serve, and my ground strokes home am for the lines. Saturday I hit spin first serves to cut down on double faults, and aimed my ground strokes and volleys more toward the middle of the court. This was a conservative approach so I would not beat myself, and as I play more I can get more aggressive and take some risks. Investment in 2007 and 2008 is like this. We need to hit the safe shots and decrease our margin of error. Once we have the basics in place, a bit of risk may be warranted. Places like Oklahoma are like hitting a tennis ball down the middle to avoid errors. On investing our hard earned dollars we don't want to see a large swing toward the negative. At the Los Angeles meeting on October 13th, we are bringing some excellent opportunities on single family homes at better than owner-occupant prices. We will also have some condo units for sale that are already rented. I also have my featured builders paying for a Chattel Pro appraisal for all new sales. This can give you an extra $89 per month in tax savings on a $175K purchase. Everything we are doing at this point with the aid of lower rates, is to have units at 10% down financing, with the inclusion of the depreciation and chattel savings to give you neutral to positive cash flow. For your future purchases, maximize your money, avoid the large negative cash flows, and like my current tennis strategy, make your investments like hitting the ball right down the middle. This will make you money in the next few years.

We are in the extended age of bailouts. The Fed cut rates todat by .5%, and the Congress is doing it's own bailout of homeowners who were seduced by the low teaser rates. Call it Indiana Jones to the rescue of the stupids and the greedy. Yes, there is predatory lending that should not go unpunished, and the American dream of owning a home is important to the psyche of our country.  It is just that giving 100% loans to unqualified people now sounds a bit silly. Am I unhappy about the bailout? Of course not. The real problem is that like the age of greed that brought on the savings and loan bailout, the baby would get thrown out with the bathwater if the Feds didn't go the extra mile. Hopefully, this will give us the time to put the housing industry on solid footing, and sanity can return to the market. I believe that the investment shark feeding frenzy has gone away, and due diligence is back in the vogue. I also think that stable markets like Oklahoma and Texas will jump in value in the 4th quarter. I was getting concerned that although our appreciation would still be in the black, the mortgage crisis would drag it back down. Now, we have a chance to get back to double digit appreciation by the first quarter of 2008. We are going to Los Angeles for the October 13th meeting with great values, pre-leased units at the East Village Project, and an agreement with the Chattel Pros to have the builders pay for the appraisal that in the first year will give you an $89 per month savings on a $175K home. I am bullish on Oklahoma!

I don't think anyone would question that our market in the United States is changing, and will continue to change in the next few years. Also, the mortgage industry is tightening it's lending requirements probably to a greater extent than necessary as it overreacts to the excesses of the last few years. Some markets that had been going at a high appreciation rate are giving up much of their gains, and some markets are bottoming on rental prices. Does this sound too gloomy? In some areas there are reasons that justify this. In other areas, the market is still climbing. Why is Oklahoma City a market still climbing? First, we are affordable. In a recent study only 5.3% of the repossessed property was because of sub prime lending, so we are not strongly affected by this being a drag on the market. Secondly, we have a stable economy. Billions in infrastructure has been spent, state government has expanded, and the federal government presence is dramatically rising with Tinker Air Force Base and the FAA. The energy industry is booming again and has helped propel OKC to the top position in cities with the highest increase in income. Strong tax incentives and the low cost of doing business is bringing companies like Dell Computers with thousands of new jobs. More importantly we are not oversaturating our market. We will continue to sell single family homes but in smaller numbers. We are doing multi-use and multifamily opportunities, and next year we will have many commercial opportunities, and many at the cost of a single family home. In 2008 and 2009, look for markets like Oklahoma that have stability and steady growth.

I enjoyed this last weekend as much as I have since my first one in 2005. Much has changed in the investment market since that time, and like all things you see the good and the bad. In the last two years, the mortgage loan business has been a wholesale giveaway that allowed investors to purchase property without a thought for the wisdom of future value or market stability. While no one had a crystal ball to say with 100% assurance that the market would change drastically, common sense should always rule the day. I saw more common sense this last weekend coming back to the forefront. It is impossible to make every investment perfect, but at least due diligence should prevail, and the attendees at this seminar did exactly that. By no means am I saying that everyone should invest all their money in Oklahoma City. If that happened the market would become over saturated, and rents would go down. It is important in 2007 and 2008 that we return to a time of less speculation, and concentrate on solid long term investments. Markets like Oklahoma City and Tulsa can still achieve positive cash flow with 20% down, some neutral with 10% down, and almost all positive with interest only loans. Recent statistics from NAR show that the average price of a home sale in Oklahoma City is up 12.1%, the second highest in the U.S. Local statistics show a 5% increase in volume over last year, where the majority of markets are trending down. While we can never show you the large run ups in value that Nevada, Arizona, and Florida achieved in the last two years, we can help you avoid the equally strong reductions in values that those cyclical markets are experiencing.