*348 went pending in the month of January.

January is behind us - how's everyone doing on their new year's resolutions?  In 2010 we will continue to watch market activity and track the percentage of distressed homes in our market. I firmly believe that these statistics will be the indicators of when the "bottom" of this finally hits. Currently 29% of all active listings are either short sales or bank owned properties, the same percentage we saw last month. In the "sold" category, 39% of the homes were either short sales or bank owned. What I have noticed is that since August of '09 when I started tracking these stats, the percentage of bank-owned properties sold has always been higher than the percentage of bank-owned active properties. This is a good statistic! Another interesting thing to note - the percentage of bank owned listings has increased from 6% in August to 9.7% in January. This is actually a good news/bad news statistic. The good news is that the banks are selling their REO homes, the bad news is the banks are getting more and more REO homes that need to be sold! We'll watch these stats along with three key factors in play right now that could make for a very active spring market:

• First time home buyer $8,000 tax credit extension
• $6,500 tax credit for existing home owners till April 30th
• Continued low interest rates

And of course in my opinion, the most important factor to watch is the job market -  without jobs or job security none of these tax credits or interest rates will amount to anything!

Current interest rates are hovering  around 5.125% with all indications leading to a rate increase in the near future.