- New way to Buy or Sell a home

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Listingbook It's New It's Fun It's FREE and best of all no need for Agents to call you or you to call them it's all automatic.

Connecticut’s own Realtor.com. listingbook is a dedicated program for the buyer and seller with loads of information for both parties.

For the buyer: Listing book lets you view all the details you want, you even get to compare prices right at your fingertips. See what’s sold, see what’s pending, reduced, canceled, withdrawn, even expired. You no longer have to worry whether or not the house you have an interest in is sold when the data says active - it's all in real time. You have full control of your account; change anything you like at anytime.

For the seller: Compare and have an educated understanding of your homes value before you speak to a Realtor. See whether or not your neighbor’s house has any activity. When your home is listed you can see the homes for sale around you and also see when they have reduced or increased (that will be back someday). You have full control over your account. You can change any of the criteria you originally put in. you can choose to have daily reports of all the activity in any town you desire.

How to get started:
Listingbook is a Realtor based program. On the registration page you will be asked for your name, phone number and e-mail address. From there you would state whether you are buying selling or both, renting, or listing a rental. In order for an Agent to set you up these items are necessary. Once you have filled out the registration form click submit. You will receive an e-mail stating you have been registered with listingbook review the e-mail and follow the prompts - After that it is your account for 180 days.

Click here to register

For more information please call 203-888-8209 or e-mail The Superior Home Living Team of Keller Williams Realty at team@superiorhomeliving.com

Enjoy!

- Risky Business

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What's going on now in the economy is being called risk aversion hysteria and that's an apt name. Unfortunately, what the hysterical avoidance of risk actually does is create more of it. With all the talk of a credit crisis, a shrinking economy and fewer jobs, people decide to be more careful with their money. This tanks consumer spending, which gets Wall Street worried, and stock prices swoon – so we wind up with a riskier environment.

A sterling example of this popped up last week. Part of the market's poor performance was tied to the terrible 2.8% drop in retail sales for October, which was directly linked to the current consumer aversion to risk. But it should be noted, if you exclude autos, building materials and gas, "core" retail sales fell only 0.5%. Still a decline, but smaller than the previous two months and, in fact, UP 1.3% over last year. We also want to point out that some economists expect October to be the worst month for retail in the recession and are projecting a "V"-shaped recovery, with growth coming back by Q2 of next year.

On the positive side, the Chinese government announced Monday a $586 billion plan to stimulate their economy. This set off a stock rally in China and inspired some good moves in our own markets for a while. And please also note that crude oil closed the week at $57.04 per barrel. But we did have lower earnings outlooks from a handful of retailers, plus Intel, who showed that techies can be cautious too. There was much hand wringing about whether the government should bail out the US auto industry. The week ended with the G20 countries meeting over the weekend in Washington to talk more about fixing this crisis and preventing future ones.

It was a super-volatile week in the markets, with a 911-point swing in the Dow on Thursday, when it closed up 552 points, its third-biggest gain ever. But for the week, all indexes ended down. The Dow was off 5.0%, at 8497.31. The S&P 500, down 6.2%, went to 873.29. The NASDAQ lost 7.9%, going to 1516.85.

The bond market moved around all week. But the benchmark 10-year Treasury ended up, so its yield, which runs counter to price, went a tick lower, finishing at 3.725%, nicely below the 4% threshold. Borrowers can expect mortgage rates to remain at historically low levels, where they've been for quite some time.

- Major loan modification program

November 2008

Last Tuesday Citigroup joined JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America in announcing a major loan modification program. The bank's CitiMortgage unit is offering to modify the terms of mortgages for borrowers at risk of falling behind on their payments. The Citi Homeowner Assistance program plans to contact about 500,000 homeowners in the next six months, involving up to $20 billion in mortgages. Citigroup's loss mitigation efforts have already prevented about 370,000 foreclosures on $35 billion in loans since early last year.

That same day, administration officials in Washington announced a plan for refinancing delinquent loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now government-controlled giant mortgage companies. This could result in lower payments for hundreds of thousands of homeowners. The program builds on the Hope Now program already in place. The goal is to reduce mortgage payments to no more than 38% of a family's monthly income. Slowing the pace of foreclosures is key to our recovery and these programs all help.

You probably heard foreclosure filings were up in October, 25% over the previous year. But foreclosure filings were up only 5% over the previous month and some states actually had declines. Lost in all the noise was the fact these filings don't all wind up as foreclosures. Borrowers are able to refinance their mortgages, negotiate loan modifications, workouts or short sales with lenders.