Boone County Roundtable

I recently attended a "Round Table" Luncheon with some local real estate professionals (i.e. appraisers, real estate agents, bankers, attorneys, brokers, developers and builders) and I thought I would shed some light on the challenges facing many of these individuals. I'll just throw out some of the verbage that was used in the meeting.

- Fear
- Education
- Volatility
- Offers being "low balled"
- Comp concerns and marketing time
- Original List Price to Selling Ratio
- Qualifying for Loans or programs changing at the last minute
- Bad Publicity or Wrongful News
- Interest Rate Volatility

All of the obstacles above and many more are what face real estate professionals in and around Boone County Missouri. I must say that it was very "refreshing" hearing others point of view on what's happening in the industry and how it affects them and their clients. What's my point? Boone County has issues that need to be addressed but given time, careful thought, and learning from errors we will overcome all of these and any others that rear their ugly head. We are a very strong community of individuals that possess uncanny intelligence and creative thinking. Also, we are not in as bad of shape that many have been led to believe! Columbia experienced exponential real estate growth during the "boom" years and in particular 2002'-2005'. It is very hard to sustain this type of growth over an extended period of time and as the cycle runs we have taken a spike downward since mid 2006'. After attending this luncheon I feel very secure that we (lenders, bankers, developers, builders, agents, etc.) are doing the right thing moving forward. We are already starting to see an increase in housing traffic, offers, a decline in housing inventory, and a "pull-back" in spec building. Just like anything else in life we will survive and be a better community for it!

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