Good news for Real Estate in Roseburg, Oregon. The US Department of Agriculture announced this week that homes inside Roseburg city limits will now qualify for its Rural Development Loan Program. What that means is that buyers who make less than $96,000 for a family of four will now be able to qualify for a loan with no money down. This could spur growth in a program that last year provided over $136 million and benefited over 950 family statewide, said Rod Hansen, the USDA’s housing programs director for Oregon.

Another sign of improvement is that the Pending Homes Sales index rose for the third straight month which is good news because pending sales lead to closed sales. Record low mortgage interest rates, first time home buyer tax credits and lower priced homes led to this trend. According to the National Home Builders Association, housing starts nationwide improved dramatically and appear to be moving toward the adjusted annual rate of 532,000 new starts. This trend has been improving for the last 3 months as well.

In Douglas County our residential market continues to improve. When you compare May 2009 with April 2009, closed sales increased 15.9%, pending sales rose by 7.2% with new listings falling by 15.9%. That means that some of the pending inventory is starting to sell. In fact, we have 16.7 months of inventory remaining on the market which is down from over 30 months in January 2009. Even though the average sales price is down for May 2009 compared to May 2008 by some 29% it has increased over last month’s sales price by 10.2% ($162,300 vs. $147,300).

I am encouraged by our recent statistics and feel that we should see signs of improvement thorugh the summer months. As you know, Douglas County continues to suffer with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state at 18+%. Many of our families are living off their unemployment benefits which continue to support many of our local businesses but those benefits won’t last forever. We need jobs! Encourage business owners to hire more employees to help us sustain a healthy economy.

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