Today our blog opens, it great! But we must work hard to get big auditory of custumers. Real estate is a difficult question, and we help you understand “what is what” i this big sea.

Mark Nash some days ago wrote about home buying, selling tips and trends for the 2007 transitional residential real estate market. He said that home owners and buyers understood that the frenzied real estate market in 2002-2005 was not the same one that we saw in 2006. The frenzied market was short on supply and strong on demand. Home sellers ruled. In 2006 with saw a shift to a more balanced market, featuring rising supply and weaker (but still the third strongest year on record) demand. However, many headlines gave home buyers the impression that they now ruled, which was not proven out, as prices rose in some delayed-fenzy markets, held or adjusted downward much less than the bubble-mongers predicted. The first half of the 2007 market could feature “deferred demand” buyers from 2006.

Also bubble headlines, high gasoline prices in the summer of 2006 and the run-up to the mid-term election kept many buyers on the sidelines in 2006. The statistics from the industry substantiate this. But, pent-up demand by first-time, move-up and life changes are bringing buyers back to market. In late November we saw buyers out in unusually high numbers for the late fourth-quarter market. They’ve continued atypically high through the holidays and the first two months of 2007 despite snow and bitter cold.

And what about Real Estate Taxes, Refunds and Rip-Offs? On this theme we talk with Peter G. Miller. He thinks that real estate taxes are a big part of local budgets. New York City, as one example, finds that it now has a $3.9 billion surplus. Why? In big part because times have been good on Wall Street, big bonuses have been paid out, lots of people bought condos and co-ops, and the city taxed every property transaction it could find. And “the effective annual interest rate (APR) for a RAL can range from about 40 percent (for a loan of $9,999) to over 700 percent (for a loan of $200). If administrative fees are charged and included in the calculation, RALs cost about 70 percent to over 1,800 percent APR,” say NCLC and CFA.

Real estate in the Russia, as anyplace in the word is on its high point. Russian civil servants obviously think that only rich people can own big apartments in fashionable districts, that is why the new tax isn’t planned for 90% of the country’s inhabitants, whose apartments’ size matches the “tax-free minimal living room�. The Russian Ministry of Finance promises, that the new real-estate tax, which is by the way to come into force after 2008, will provide disadvantaged population with particular privileges and low tax rate. All this would better be true, otherwise the rent taken for a standard apartment may increase by 85 times.

There is a lot of news about real estate in the world. The strength of New York’s real estate market doesn’t lie entirely in Manhattan. According to the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), sale prices of residential dwellings in Brooklyn showed strong gains through 2006. One-, two- and three-family home prices jumped 16 percent to reach a median of $570,000. Meanwhile, median apartment prices rose 6 percent and median condo prices rose about 9 percent in the same period. So, while 2006 residential home sale prices in Brooklyn are half what they’d be in Manhattan, the borough has held strong in the real estate market in its own right.

Just a few months into 2007 and New York’s real estate market is already breaking records. New Jersey real estate family the Kushners have sealed the deal on 666 Fifth Ave. for $1.8 billion, the largest amount ever paid for a single building. The 41-story skyscraper, located between 52nd and 53rd streets, was bought from Tishman Speyer Properties. The 26-year-old scion of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner, signed the record-breaking contract. The building currently houses several high-powered law firms and bankers as well as the exclusive cigar room the Grand Havana Room a haunt of the politically-connected and wealthy

Be sure, as Realtors, we have an ethical responsibility to advise the seller on correct pricing — that comes from experience. More often than not sellers in this current market are seeking our services out of desperation! They are seeking us out for our expertise; they do not want empathy, but rather results! So a listing appointment is not a magic show or time for a group hug. It is reality time!