March Home Buyer Fair

If you're at all thinking about buying or selling a home anytime soon, there's a great event coming up in Downtown Los Angeles.

It's not a sales event. It's an informational/educational event put on by the California Association of Realtors.

It's FREE.

It's two days at the Convention Center, March 13 and 14 and the list of scheduled presentations includes:

· Your Guide to the Home Buyer Tax Credits
· Finding a REALTOR®: The First Step to Your First Home
· Finding a Home Loan in Today’s Market
· Credit Boot Camp: How to Fix Your Finances
· How to Negotiate Your Loan Modification
· How to Plan and Save for Your First Home
· Your First Home: What to Know Before You Buy
· Don’t Lose Your Home: How to Avoid Foreclosure
· Stay Covered: The Basics of Homeowner’s Insurance
· Assistance Programs for First-time Buyers
· How to Find and Buy Foreclosures, Short Sales, and REOs
· Everything You Need to Know About CalVet Programs
· The California Housing Market Outlook
· Home Inspection 101
· Put Your Money to Work: Finding the Right Investment Property
· Don’t Get Scammed: Tips on Avoiding Mortgage Fraud
· Loan Tips for First-time Buyers

For the full program, CLICK HERE.

Or to to the website: homebuyersfair.com

Southern California housing price confusion

Time for me, once again, to point out the ridiculousness of single-month housing data.

As the story in today's LA Times points out, Southern California housing prices are up dramatically over last January and down dramatically over December.

Huh?

As I've said many times before, a single month is too small a sample to be meaningful when home purchases are at least a 30-day event.

But this story so dramatically makes my point, I had to give it special attention. Here, the article even points out its own futility:

• The month-to-month decline was attributable in part to the higher percentage of cheaper Inland Empire homes that sold in January compared with December as buyers in pricier locales stopped searching during the holidays and investors and first-time buyers made up a larger share of shoppers.

The writer is flat out telling you how flawed the information is.

This is why we only look at QUARTERLY data.