Bob's Blog

My March 10 post made the audacious claim that the housing freefall was over. How could I have such wisdom??? Actually, MLS has been showing an improvement in many statistics for several months (higher prices, less inventory, more offers, quicker sales.) Its important to take what you read with a grain of salt. Now n

take a look at this article from my MSN.com homepage from OFFHEO (The Office of Federal Housing and Enterprise) concerning home prices from January.

January 2009 home prices

The Case Shiller report for the same period will be released next Tuesday and should also show a turn around!

Hey – does everybody know about the Colorado Golf Passport? Geez, if you like to smack the little white ball around, this is the way to go. Buy a passport for $79.95 and get discounted golf all over Colorado including several top courses. Seriously, this is $5000 in discounts at over 50 Colorado links. You even get $0 worth of golfballs. Why would you not do this?

You can thank me at the 19th hole

Apparently not as much as there used to be….

As my blog grows and prospers over time, I actually intend to devote a good amount of it to good health. I strongly believe that Americans, who are busy and oversatureated with TMI while not having enough quality time to devote to themselves and their wellbeing have very little clue of the real (and really small) level of nutrition they are taking into their bodies compared to our grandparents or earlier. (BTW, want a really glaring example? Walk the “food” aisles of your local Costco and start taking notes of how much simple starch and sugar you are walking by. I swear it must reach 75% of what is on the shelves! Now look for some complex carbs or even better, some protein. And we wonder where obesity starts?

And here’s the double whammy: Accept the fact that we’re over-carbed, it’s pretty easy to see. What’s not so easy to see is that even the good foods we eat are a shadow of what they used to be. Through years of commercial farming and widescale pesticide spraying, our crops have become seriously altered. Do you remember when a tomato actually tasted like a tomato and not like chewy cellophane?

So, enter Dr. Mercola to the rescue. I had the privelege of being a patient at Dr. Mercola’s practice when I lived in Chicago. Since I moved to Colorado, I believe his website has grown to become one of the five biggest health and wellness sites on the web. You will be well served to go there and add it to your favorites. We all need to be armed with the right information these days!

What’s in your vegetables these days?

Just this morning our Keller Williams office leadership team held our monthly meeting. It was suggested that we “bang the gavel” and declare, “It is over!”. It being the housing slump in the Denver market. Why is it over? Cuz we said so!

Logging on to my MSN homepage tonight to check the news I smiled a bit when I came across this headline:

Have  home prices finally bottomed out?

Is it really over? I say it is? What about you? Please comment….

It’s that time of year again where we spring forward. Yeah! So don’t forget to move those clocks forward one hour before you go to bed tonight. Just in case you wanted to be an expert on the facts behind DST, here’s an interesting article from Infoplease. (Yawn!) I’m tired, goodnight!

Why do we observe Daylight Savings Time (DST)?

Alright, this post is just for your viewing pleasure, if you want to call it that. Here is a video recreation of the January water landing in the Hudson by USAirways flight 1549. This is done in real time in synch with the actual aircraft to controller transmissions. It was over in a hurry. Thank God everyone walked away. Kudos to Captain Sullenberger, the entire flightcrew, Air Traffic Control and all the first responders. Flawless!

Flight 1549 ditching video

I have just joined Flikr! I have created a Lowry, Denver, CO site to showcase this great community!There’s just a test page now, but check in soon for some really cool pix!

Here’s an article out of today’s Denver Post that should cause a little sigh of relief:

Metro Denver Home Prices fall 4% from Dec. 07 to Dec. 08

The news here is that, altough no one likes falling prices, the Denver Metro area ranked the lowest price drop of the 20 major US metro areas surveyed for the statistical study.

Please realize that this is a compilation of ALL Denver area home sales. Just as I mentioned in last weeks article about Zillow, statistics can vary county to county, town to town and block to block!. THAT is why you need a professional real estate agent (like me!) to do a comparitive market analysis (CMA) for you. There are areas in Denver that are appreciating. For anyone even remotely considering buying, look at my prior blogs on home prices and credit unions to gauge the “perfect storm” of low home prices, low interest rates, lack of enough buyers and – for first time homebuyers, your maximum gift of $8000 from Congress – that should make you seriously consider pulling the trigger now.

I know this is the internet, but I’m not talking about that kind of spam. I’m talking about the REAL Spam, produced by Hormel Foods in Austin, MN.  So, here’s an article about Hawaii and Spam. If you’ve never been to Hawaii, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but if you have been there, then you do.. I just didn’t know what to write about today (the Academy Awards are SO ’90′s) and my wife, who is Filipino was longing for Spam and if you know anything about Filipinos, they probably love Spam as much as Hawaiins. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say, except I hope Slumdog Millionaire wins best picture!

Spam, the other white meat

Everyone loves to talk about money, cuz none of us have enough of it these days. Anyway, I’m no financial guru, by any means, but I do invest in some stocks. (Disclosure: my holdings don’t exceed $10,000!) But anyway, here’s a few stocks I’m optomistic of. And I don’t have to be a genius, almost everything is a bargain these days.

1. John Deere (DE) OK, they’re not making as much money as before, but they are STILL MAKING MONEY!

2. General Electric (GE) blue chip America for less than $10/ share?

3. Novagold (NG) holder of some of the largest gold deposits in Canada.

4. Pengrowth Energy Trust (PGH) below it’s 52 week low and posting a 24% dividend.

Your thoughts, comments and recommendations???