JOBS: WE LOVE THEM

I know you saw the headlines yesterday: Record Foreclosures in our area. It’s enough to make you shave 10 percent right off the top of your home’s sales price. (And don’t think that article won’t have that very effect.) But calls to my real estate sources tell me the foreclosures are clustered in areas outside of the Dallas epicenter — Rockwall, southwest Dallas — and this trend may have more to do with adjustable rate mortgages than anything. But here’s what one realtor told me: “I have never heard so many homeowners complain about their energy bills.” That’s right. It is very expensive to cool an 8,000-square-foot home. Even Dave Pery-Miller of Prudential said he’s starting to hear his 50 plus-year-old clients talk about downsizing “now that the kids are leaving the nest”.

It could be that the high cost of energy may finally put the brakes on the ever-expanding home square footage. Heck, even Sixty Minutes reported on the growing house recently. So am I leaving you with doom and gloom? Not at all. One of the main reasons Realtors tell me we in Texas will remain ahead of the impending housing slowdown is our job growth. And we have added 230,300 non-agriculture jobs in the last year. As long as the majority of those are not in new home construction, that’s a very good sign for us. Jobs: we love ‘em!