Some markets, such as Florida, have been hit harder than others in the current market. Each quarter the U.S. Census Bureau publishes renter and homeowner vacancy rates; the 2007 4th quarter rate for homeowner vacancy of 2.8% is the highest since it began collecting this information in the 1960's. See more comments and the interactive map at
http://longbeachrealestate.blogspot.com/2008/03/long-beachlos-angeles-metropolitan-area.html

If you're like me, you're really tired of how the media is going after the housing market -- yep, I call it "going after". So I was so glad to see Berniece Ross do her thing on Inman.com today at http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=65242 -- the link won't last forever, but she cites USA Today as just one source of the problem, here is a pertinent quote of what she says was omitted from a report by a mortgage banking official covered in the press:

"1. Thirty-five percent of the homes in the U.S. do NOT have a mortgage.

1. Some 94.88 percent of the loans ARE performing.




2. The foreclosure problem in this country is really a story about seven states.




3. The biggest foreclosure problems are in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. These are manufacturing states that had horrible job losses. Since 2001, Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs. These states would probably have had problems no matter what the market was doing.




4. The other four states -- California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona -- experienced significant overbuilding. Twenty-five percent of the foreclosures in these states are on properties that are held by investors who were speculating.




5. Only 25 percent of all mortgages are subprime, and of these, 75 percent are performing.




6. In the other 43 states, foreclosures have fallen in 2007 from 2006 (data from Michael Clawson, vice president, Central Texas Mortgage)."

I just added an entry to the Real Estate Forum--what do other agents think about this? Should we put a property search in both places? I used to get a lot of prospect signins, but now not as much as I used to. Did we give away the store by allowing the entire world to access our MLS? After all, just because people have the ability to sift through listings on their own is not indication they are better served by it. Even my own title officer recently said he does not use a Realtor site to look at properties, he has so many others to choose from. Now that we're in this situation, what can we offer that's unique?