From the May 6, 2008 Wall Street Journal, in an article by Cyril Moulle-Berteaux.

The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

The boom made housing unaffordable for many American families, especially first-time home buyers. During the 1990s and early 2000s, it took 19% of average monthly income to service a conforming mortgage on the average home purchased. By 2005 and 2006, it was absorbing 25% of monthly income. For first time buyers, it went from 29% of income to 37%. That just proved to be too much.

Prices got so high that people who intended to actually live in the houses they purchased (as opposed to speculators) stopped buying. This caused the bubble to burst.

Since then, house prices have fallen 10%-15%, while incomes have kept growing (albeit more slowly recently) and mortgage rates have come down 70 basis points from their highs. As a result, it now takes 19% of monthly income for the average home buyer, and 31% of monthly income for the first-time home buyer, to purchase a house. In other words, homes on average are back to being as affordable as during the best of times in the 1990s. Numerous households that had been priced out of the market can now afford to get in.

During the Lakers/Mavericks game this afternoon, the skinny Van Gundy brother dumped on Memphis again. Talking about the Gasol trade, he said just getting out of Memphis was the good part of the trade for him. Being on a championship contending team was just a bonus. I don’t have the exact quote, because I don’t have this “Tivo” you speak of. If someone has the exact wording, or a link to the video, PLEASE let me know.

Later in the game, just before halftime he listed his candidates for MVP. Among Lebron James, and Kobe Bryant was the entire Memphis Organization for “adjusting the balance of power in the Western Conference”. He’s actually right about that. The Gasol trade is what started the arms race in the West.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks made his endorsement for President of the U.S. of America today.

The only reason this has any relevance for us in Memphis is…Michael Heisley. I grew up in the shadow of the awfulness that was (and still is) the Los Angeles Clippers. Donald Sterling, the owner of the Clippers is widely acknowledged as a great member of the community in L.A. for his charity work. He’s made a lot of money through his real estate investments, but his claim to “fame” is as the worst owner in professional sports history.

Mark Cuban has quickly earned himself a reputation as one of the best owners in professional sports. He bought the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 and turned them from a laughingstock into a consistent powerhouse in the Western Conference. On a Heisley-related note, he’s expressed interest in buying the Chicago Cubs if/when they go up for sale.

I wish, WISH, Michael Heisley cared half as much about the Grizzlies as Cuban does about the Mavericks. Cuban never would have traded away Pau. He would have found a way to get Jason Kidd and/or Shaquille O’Neal.

Ever since Cuban took over his team, he’s been about making it a better team, no matter what it costs. And the money follows. I went to a Mavericks game in Dallas a couple years ago and they had sold every possible inch of advertising space. Everyone in the community wants to be associated with the Mavericks.

With the Pau trade, the Grizzlies transformed from the team everyone else in the league pitied into the team everyone in the league curses under their breath. They’re worse than the Clippers now. Everyone expects the Clippers to be terrible, and other teams kinda feel bad for them. No one is going to feel bad for the Grizzlies when they’re awful. Don’t expect anyone to do us any favors for the next couple of years.

Oh, by the way, Cubans’ pick for President? Michael Bloomberg.

There is nothing more frustrating than the hundreds of “experts” on real estate investing. Search YouTube for “real estate” or “real estate investing” and you will find thousands (seriously, THOUSANDS) of people trying to hawk their products for free on YouTube and then convince people to sign up for their wonder program.

Check out this guy…

“He’s just gonna come in at whatever you want it to come in at which more or less, sucks, know what I mean?”

From The Memphis Flyer:

You read that right. Our very own Mayor Willie Herenton is among 50 finalists in the 2008 “World Mayor Award,” given annually to the planet Earth’s best mayor.

From the press release: “According to city residents from all continents, a great mayor must possess these qualities: good administrative abilities, able to provide safety and security and protect the environment, as well as having the ability to foster good relations between communities from different cultural, racial and social backgrounds.

To recap: A great mayor needs to have a) good administrative abilities (Maybe he does. I couldn’t say) b) provide safety (nope) and security (uh-uh) and protect the environment (Sure. Give him the benefit of the doubt here) and c) have the ability to foster good relations between communities from different cultural, racial, and social backgrounds. (ahahahahahahahaha)

He won’t win though. He’s up against the mayors of Los Angeles, Miami, Honolulu, Phoenix, and Minneapolis, and that’s just North America. In fact, when you look at the list of the top 50 nominees, it looks like Memphis is just the token southern city they threw in to keep people from complaining.

After some boring domain name forwarding issues, entering www.willhicks.com into your address will once again connect you with “Commercial Real Estate in Memphis and our Galaxy”. Try it. It’s fun. All the cool kids are doing it.

From the McKinney Courier-Gazette:

The jury in the Sarah Anne Walker capital murder trial unanimously determined Wednesday after more than three-and-a-half hours of deliberation that the state proved Chanthakoummane, 27, is a future danger to society and should be sentenced to death. Each juror confirmed their vote for 380th District Court Judge Charles Sandoval with a simple “yes it is” or “yes, sir.”

From the McKinney Star Courier-Gazette:

The final day of the punishment phase of Kosoul Chanthakoummane’s capital murder trial came to a somber close as members of Sarah Anne Walker’s family testified how her brutal murder left a mark on their families.

The jury heard from two members of Walker’s family before both sides closed their cases. Jackie Mull, Walker’s younger sister, described the phone call she received from a McKinney Police Department official when she learned her sister had been killed. She said she received a call from McKinney PD Capt. Randy Roland, who advised her to pull over if she was driving. She wondered if something happened to her parents, but she eventually realized her sister, Walker, worked in McKinney.
Mull also said Walker loved spending time with her then-4-year-old son, Josh.

“Sarah liked to play with Josh,” Mull said. “He liked to play cars with her. She was also very adventurous. She liked to do fun things like take Josh to Six Flags or the water park.”

Dawn Tate, Randy Tate’s mother and Walker’s mother-in-law, said she feels Josh simply “misses his mom.”

She said the family sought counseling for Josh and has tried to tell him the truth “without the gory details” based on the advice of their counselor.

“In the beginning when Randy tried to tell him, he covered his ears and ran screaming through the house,” Mrs. Tate said. “Randy consoled him and brought him into the bedroom and tried to tell him his mother had been murdered for a watch and a ring. He cried and screamed and asked to get the doctor to put her back together and make her well again.”

After that day, Josh occasionally suffers emotional “meltdowns,” grinds his teeth and has nightmares in his sleep. Mrs. Tate said she tries to curb his fears about bad dreams by telling him to turn his pillow over to the good dreams on the other side.

“It’s just been overwhelming for him to think he doesn’t have his mommy,” Mrs. Tate said.

The Dallas Morning News has a commentary piece on the Sarah Walker case and trial.

“A bizarre murder mystery in Texas!” trumpeted Fox News after Ms. Walker’s body was discovered in a model home at the pricey, squeaky-clean McKinney subdivision where she worked. “Who targeted Sarah Anne Walker, and why? Police are searching for clues and a motive!”…

…Sarah Walker didn’t harbor a dark secret. She had no hidden enemies, no spiteful ex-boyfriend, no stalker nut she had chatted up online. She was just unlucky, about as unlucky as a human being can be.

Her killing was as pointless and petty as any convenience-store stickup and shooting. It’s a less salacious news story than some of us anticipated, but it does not lessen the grief of those who loved her.

I got an email advertising the website “RealEstateNewsDesk.com”. It takes news feeds from several different sites like Google News, NYTimes.com, and MSNBC.com and puts them all on one screen for you.

Most of the articles are residential themed, but there may be some use for you.