forbes' list of sizzling markets comes with caveats. most of these places are areas that had stagnant realty markets but suddenly, and perhaps because of, they offer employment. wait. maybe people would choose to live near an oil refinery. perhaps the oil companies offer gas masks to local residences. Salem, Oregon is one exception to the undesirable list. sounds nice.

Shhhhhh. No good news allowed, remember. The far fringe loonies will collapse if there is any sign of a turnaround.

In all seriousness, we do seem to have reached the apex of panic and the bandwagon has quietly turned around. While the public and media, who tend to be about 6 months behind the facts and usually just report on what the bandwagon looks like from the distance, gnash and grind our teeth in a veritable bacchanalian frenzy, a lot of teh big players are quietly bargain hunting. I have a friend at one of the major commercial real estate management companies in the country, based out of Denver, and after being pretty much dead for most of the last part of 2006 and the first 7 month sof 2007, she is insanely busy right now as they are buying up properties at a rate she hasn't seen in her 9 years at the company. The bargain hunting has begun, and the savvy buyers with the means to do so will be quietly pillaging the real estate market in the winter/spring and by teh time teh media gets around to repsonding and noticing, it will already be too late because teh vultures will have taken the prime meat and only left scraps.

I recall that Janis Joplin left Port Arthur TX because it was so boring.

How is it now?

Who would want to live in Salt Lake City?

No thanks! I'd rather live in where at least the climate is nice, even if it's not LA or NYC.

Hint: you'd really want to check out Farmington NM before you decided to move there.

Scams Away!