Ramesh Nyberg's Real Estate Blog

I had an interesting weekend. I was fighting off a cold all week (still am, actually) and so on Saturday I really needed to get out of the house and do something different. You know those little cherry-like fruit that grow on bushes all over South Florida..they look like little pumpkins, and they are red when they are ripe? Well, they are called Surinam Cherries. We have an entire hedge of them along our back fence, and another bush near the patio. I've never seen so many ripe fruit on the bush. I kind of grew up on these things. So Linnea and I picked a whole mess of them.. filling up two large bowls. I ate at least twenty of them that night, but I had always wondered, "what kind of jam would this fruit make?"

Ok, I'll spare you all the details. I made jam Sunday. I've never made jam in my life. In fact, my cooking experience is limited to bbq, the occasional curry, and my annual holiday pecan pies. I Googled up a recipe for making jam, and by Sunday evening, I had three full jars of Surinam Cherry Jam, or Surinam Jam, if you want to get poetic. It is, officially, GOOD. I had some on my toast this morning, and I really liked it. Both my son and my wife tried it and gave it high marks. Linnea, though she had fun making it, wouldn't touch the stuff.

The next day, a customer called me and ended up writing an offer on a property. So, making jam obviously has a postive effect on business.

So the beat goes on. Sorry for sounding like a broken record here, but NOT tracking the progress of the market wouldn't be like me, and not sharing with everyone I know makes no sense.

March finished our FIFTH straight month of decreasing inventory. The number of unsold homes fell below 13,000 for the first time in two years. Pending sales went soaring: 1405 in March, compared to 977 in February, 900 in January. No, you didn't read this in the Miami Herald. Why on earth would they print this? It's not depressing enough.

"Months of Inventory" is a statistic based on a ratio between average monthly sales vs. unsold inventory. In January 08, it was 34.4, and it has steadily decreased--with a couple of zigs and zags, down to March's amazing figure of 9.2. We've been in the dumps so long with economic/housing news that it sounds like a reach to speak optimistically. But this is looking more like a real recovery than a brief trend. Notice that the stock market is not as volatile lately, and that the DOW is hanging around that 8,000 mark with a little more toughness? Notice that the mortgage interest rates actually crept UP a little the other day. Hmmm.

I know one thing--I've been working at a very brisk pace with so many buyers that I have referred a couple of them out to other agents.
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My Easter was nice--and if you have a chance to ever color eggs with a 5-1/2 year old girl, I highly recommend it. It was highly therapeutic and fun. And oh yeah, the ensuing egg hunt was cool too. Linnea wanted to do it a second time.
I've got some dear friends in from Connecticut, and so we are going to find some time to hit the beach, the Everglades, and my friend Mike's jazz jam tomorrow night.
The NFL draft is 10 days away, the Dolphins new schedule is out, and they have four--count em FOUR night games, three of them at home. Nice! Thins ARE looking up!