Ever feel you are getting depressed every time you listen to news? This is especially true of the housing market. News everyday seems to be negative and out of touch with some local markets.

If you want to know what the local market is doing, you have to check with local Realtors who are buying and selling daily. They can tell you if the market indicators are encouraging you to buy or hold your house. They are the ones who know what the best values are. Local Realtors the ones who know where to get the best interest rates.

Local real estate varies from state to state, community to community. On the coasts and some certain states the market bottomed and people are loosing dramatically, but in other states, there has not been much of a decline in property values.

In Oklahoma, where I am, people listen to the news and are clueless to the true price of homes. The sellers want much more than they are worth. Many buyers think that any offer they put on a house should be accepted, not realizing that someone has to pay off the mortgage and pay closing costs.

Stop listening to national news to determine when to buy and sell. Check with a local expert and make reasonable offers on homes and watch your investment grow. It will come back. I am a positive person about the future. What goes down, will come back up. This has been true for many years about houses and it will be true again.

Although some markets may stay depressed for many years because there was too much built in such a short time, and many were approved for home loans who simply cannot afford them, most people will ride through the storm and recover.

This economic downturn should be a lesson to all of us to learn how much we can truly afford and stay away from loans that are too much for us to sustain when things get bad, or we have a family crisis. Other than that, quit listening to bad news and look forward to great affordable homes.