Whoa Nellie.. or Stop the Falling Market!!!!

It would seem that now is not the time to buy stocks. This may be true but I am not a stock analyst or soothsayer so I can not tell you. But I do know that if you own a home and want to improve it. Now is a good time to do so.

We do home improvements and mortgages and I can tell you that there aren't many mortgages out there. But if you have a good credit score and a high interest rate mortgage, now is the time to act. The Fed has lowered the overnight funds rate and this usually is reflected in the mortgage rate. It shouldn't but it does.

If you don't need to refinance for rate but do wish to get some money to do some improvement, this is also a good time to do that as well.

If you have the money to do the repairs now, the cold weather, is the best time to get them done. I saw on the television and heard on the radio that some of the high profile companies are offering deep discounts for home improvements because of the cold weather. We don't offer discounts because we are already less expensive than those companies even after their "discounts".

The crashing stock markets and the 'subprime mortgage crisis' is not going to affect your home or the value of your home in the long term so rather than try to sell your home with the 'depressed market' fix it up, and in a few months or so (probably after the elections) you can sell it then. Because regardless of who wins the elections we will have a different President, and Congress and when that is 'settled' things will return to some semblance of normalcy.

Also take notice, that since we have been doing mortgages since 1989 we have a fair idea of the value of your home and we will inform you if the home improvement you wish will be an increase of asset or an over kill for the neighborhood. What do I mean by this? I will explain.

If the assessor says your home is worth $100,000 and you want to add a room 14x15 or so how much will the value of your home go up? If you look at other houses in your immediate neighborhood and the houses with the "new" number of rooms and square feet you add are not increased by the cost amount of the "new" addition, then it probably is not a wise move.

Remember though that things that are done as 'maintenance' do not always add value. In other words, a roof repair or replacement just 'maintains' the current value. Adding a bathroom adds value, usually to the home about twice what the cost of installing it, but re-tiling the floor or fixing a leak often will add nothing to it.

You may choose to do the addition or improvement anyway and that will be good too because over five to seven years the value should catch up with the improvement even with the current problems in the real estate market. Nothing lasts forever and this market will change too.

So don't panic, but do act if you need anything for your home because there is no better time than now.