Aug. 3, 2007 - Ithaca NY Real Estate is Alive and Well

I haven't posted to my blog in a while for a variety of reasons; one being that I have been extremely busy because the real estate market in Ithaca is not suffering the same downward turn as in other areas of the country, and generally doesn't.

A recent article in the Ithaca Journal dated July 18 espoused the discouraging news about the difficulty that first time homebuyers have. As pointed out in a letter to the editor by my esteemed colleague and good friend, Peggy Haine, even first-time homebuyers have the great good fortune to be able to avail themselves of services provided by Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services for Tompkins County and also the SONYMA program that allows first time homebuyers, that qualify, to take advantage of, among other perks, a lower interest rate.

So the sky isn't falling. The real estate market always experiences fluctuations, By and large, real estate prices are reflective of the uniqueness of a property competing against other properties at a given time. If there are several similar homes on the market at one time, prices tend to go down. Because of the transient nature of the Ithaca population, we have more buyers than other areas (particularly in the spring) to absorb the excess housing and competition for the declining number of homes will cause the selling prices to escalate.

Buying real estate is not risky and is a great way to build wealth over the long run. Don't buy into all of the doom and gloom about the poor state of the real estate market. We're doing just fine in the Ithaca area.