4 Real Estate Sales This Week!

As I have mentioned on this blog before, good weather in the winter brings out the buyers. In conjunction with amazing interest rates, this trend should continue in the weeks to come. Our sales were in Meridian Kessler (2), Carmel and Downtown Indianapolis.

www.MacGillTeam.com Has a New Look

Our website has undergone a complete redesign and will be online and complete in the next day or so. Please feel free to visit the site to search for homes, browse our listings, check out school info, use a mortgage calculator, look at community information and all kinds of other helpful real estate information.

Real Estate in Indy is Open for Business!W

What a wonderful job our city did in hosting the Super Bowl! And the game couldn't really have been any better-two great teams and a great matchup. But now, the focus in our fair city will undoubtably turn to real estate. Mortgage rates are below 4% for 30 year loans with Tier 1 credit and even better for 15 year mortgages. FHA loans are also in this territory. Call us today to set up a Client Gateway, or real estate search!

No Open Houses Today, But 4-6 Next Weekend

With the Super Bowl in Indianapolis today, there doesn't seem to be much point in hosting open houses. But look out next weekend because I expect the MacGill Team will host 4-6 homes open next Sunday, the 12th. Barring a blizzard, we will have some great new listings and they should all be open both in Washington Township and Clay Township.

Real Estate May be Helped by This!

Here is some good news from the New York Times!

U.S. Economy Added 243,000 Jobs in January; Unemployment Dips to 8.3% The United States economy gained momentum in January, adding 243,000 jobs, the second straight month of better-than-expected gains, the Labor Department reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent. The promising jobs numbers came as various economic indicators have painted an ambivalent picture of the recovery’s strength.

Happy Groundhog's Day!

Apparently, Punxsutawney Phil came out of his burrow and saw his shadow. If you believe in this sort of thing, it means that there will be six more weeks of winter. This seems a little dubious since the temperatures have been in the 50's all week in Indianapolis. We have been talking to quite a few prospective sellers lately and we expect to be listing a fair number of properties next week-both in Hamilton County and in Marion County.

Great Weather Should Normally Bring the Buyers Out!

This fabulous weather our fair city is experiencing is a welcome respite from the winter. And, it is also welcome for the Super Bowl fans who are converging on Indianapolis, but it is not translating into buyer activity for home purchases. It appears the city is enjoying the fanfare of the Super Bowl and I would expect to see a lot of appointments for showings on homes next week.

What Happens to my Credit Score if...?

Credit Underwriting Guidelines for Derogatory Credit Events Bankruptcy Chapter 7 or 11: Fannie Mae: 4 years from Discharge FHA: 2 years from Discharge Bankruptcy Chapter 13: Fannie Mae: 2 years from discharge/ FHA: 1 year minimum of payout elapsed 4 years from dismissal Multiple Bankruptcies: Fannie Mae: 5 years, if more than 1 FHA: N/A filing in past 7 years Foreclosure Fannie Mae: 7 years from sheriff's deed FHA: 3 years from sheriff's deed Short Sale Fannie Mae: 2 years 80% Max LTV FHA: 3 years for Deed in Lieu Deed in lieu of Foreclosure 4 years 90% Max LTV Short Sale: eligible if mortgage and all install- 7 years LTV greater than 90% ment debt made on time for 12 months preceding the short sale.

5514 Winthrop is Open Today from 12-2 pm

Just Listed 5514 Winthrop offered at $182,900

Fabulous Mer-Kessler 1923 built bungalow rebuilt from foundation in 2000! Cathedral ceilings in virtually every room, arches and updates galore! Monon is across street & walk to restaurants, bars & shopping! New Santos mahogany floors in great room and dining room, new furnace, updated kitchen w/ceramic tile floor, built ins, oversize 2 car garage, updated bath, private side patio & fenced back yard. Amazing home, awesome location

Just Listed! 13516 Lablanca Bend

This beautiful 5 bedroom home is now on the market for $300,000! Stop by the open house this Sunday, from 3-5 or schedule an appointment to see it. You can see it on www.MacGillTeam.com or www.talktotucker.com. MLS number is 21157947

Fed Outlook on the Economy

Here is an article from the New York Times with a somewhat pessimistic view of the economy, hence the picture of the recovery room. On the flip side, we are still seeing very strong activity in Indianapolis real estate.



WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve, declaring that the economy would need help for years to come, said Wednesday it would extend by 18 months the period that it plans to hold down interest rates in an effort to spur growth.



The Fed said that it now planned to keep short-term interest rates near zero until late 2014, continuing the transformation of a policy that began as shock therapy in the winter of 2008 into a six-year campaign to increase spending by rewarding borrowers and punishing savers.

The economy expanded “moderately” in recent weeks, the Fed said in a statement released after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, but jobs were still scarce, the housing sector remained deeply depressed and Europe’s flirtation with crisis could undermine the nascent domestic recovery.

The Fed forecast growth of up to 2.7 percent this year, up to 3.2 percent next year and up to 4 percent in 2014, but at the end of that period, the central bank projected that the recovery would still be incomplete. Workers would still be looking for jobs, and businesses would still be looking for customers.

“What did we learn today? Things are bad, and they’re not improving at the rate that they want them to improve,” said Kevin Logan, chief United States economist at HSBC. “That’s what they concluded — ‘We’ve eased policy a lot, but we haven’t eased it enough.’ ”

The economic impact of the low-interest rate extension, however, is likely to be modest. Many businesses and consumers can’t qualify for loans, a problem the Fed’s efforts do not address. Moreover, long-term rates already are at record low levels and, like pushing on a spring, the going gets harder as it nears the floor. Finally, the Fed already was widely expected by investors to hold rates near zero well into 2014, limiting the benefits of a formal announcement.

“I wouldn’t overstate the Fed’s ability to massively change expectations through its statements,” the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said at a press conference Wednesday after the announcement. “It’s important for us to say what we think and it’s important for us to provide the right amount of stimulus to help the economy recover from its currently underutilized condition.”

The Fed’s plans for interest rates were unveiled amid a barrage of statements the central bank released Wednesday as part of its campaign to improve its transparency. And while it pleased some investors in the markets, it left others befuddled. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been down in the morning, began rising steadily after the Fed released its statement at about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Dow finished the day up 81.21 points at 12,756.96.

First came the Fed’s traditional statement, released after each meeting of its policy-making committee, which said that the central bank intended to hold short-term rates near zero “at least through late 2014.”

Ninety minutes later, the Fed published for the first time the predictions of the committee’s members on when they would raise interest rates. It showed that 11 of the 17 members expected the Fed to raise rates by the end of 2014. Taken together, the documents suggested that the Fed expected to keep rates near zero until late 2014, but probably not any longer than that.

Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, the Fed has alternated bursts of activity with periods of rest, concluding several times that it had done enough only to find the economy still struggling to recover. The Fed announced last summer that the central bank intended to keep interest rates near zero through at least the middle of 2013, and that it would seek to reduce long-term interest rates through changes in the kinds of investment securities it holds. Since then, two meetings had passed without the introduction of any new programs.