Allison Brophy has another great article  in the Culpeper Star Exponent taking a closer look at the real estate market and the state of foreclosures in Culpeper county. Culpeper's been one of the hardest hit counties in this part of Virginia.

And a timely article in Slate on why the argument that the sub prime mess is because lenders were forced to do sub prime mortgages by the government is hogwash.

There are some signs that lenders are anticipating President-Elect Obama's 90 day moratorium on foreclosures and voluntarily beginning to comply in advance. If your a seller this will be good news, at least in the short term! Prices may stabilize sooner than anyone anticipated. And, if these properties stay off the market, that stabilization may last.

While it would seem that at the end of that time you'd get a bunch of foreclosures hitting the market and driving prices down once again, I'm not sure that will be true. I suspect that during the 90 days plans will be made to permanently reduce the foreclosures to a trickle.

If you're a buyer, it means the number of great deals may be shrinking quickly. If you've been waiting for the bottom of this market, waiting any longer could get expensive.

This is an interesting map tool showing various non-prime mortgage stats in a US map format. You can choose the kind of information you want, enter the zip code you're interested in and see the detailed info.

The map is courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. Given that, I tend to think the information is pretty reliable.

The good news is that we don't appear to be in particularly bad shape. I looked at some of the hardest hit zip codes around, including Prince William and Culpeper, and didn't see anything that looked particularly ugly.

Wouldn't it be nice if it felt that way!?