Perhaps some will but instead I think they’ll go with more of a feng shui approach.

I have travelled to many states to train/consult. Western Washington and the greater Puget Sound area are very liberal when compared with other areas.

Alan,

Recently I was in a small town conducting a Realtor training when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a minister in the lobby of a state-funded college aggressively pushing religious literature in my face. Well, to be fair, I’m only 5′2″ so when an average height man holds his hand out with a ‘come to jesus’ pamphlet in it, it’s right at my face.

I asked him what he was doing in a state-funded institution and to get the hell away from me and my students. He told me he had the permission of the college to be there. I told him to leave or I would call the state dept of education. He left.

If we’re taking a vote here, I vote for a separation between church and real estate. What you do on your own time is your choice.

If the Florida church service helps the Realtors feel better, more power to them.

HOWEVER, the first Realtor from this Florida group to proclaim that jesus helped them with their business success brings a loss of credibility to the group. What it WILL bring, is media attention and of course then, their phones will ring, which will proceed to undermine their irrational exhuberance that jesus helped their phone to ring.

Go see the mildly funny Evan Almighty, in theaters now, for a much more direct lesson on how to help yourself in today’s real estate market.

One thing the South needs to pray for (I’m from there, so I can criticize it, right?) is less of the ‘good ole boy network’ and more honest to goodness hard work regardless of who you are.

But we do at least have one thing going for us down there…the food!

From what I gather far fewer negative amortization, 100% interest, or 100% finance loans have been made in the Puget Sound region over the last few years than in previous Seattle area booms (like the late ‘89-’90). Thus, since our booming economy (with great jobs) is allowing people to buy houses with down-payments covering a much greater proportion of the cost than ever before, we have a much greater buffer to weather any general national real-estate malaise.

The regions that will feel a lot of pain are the places where people have been stretching themselves more than during past booms, with lower down payments and exotic financing that allows them to have low down-payments (at the expense of not really paying down the loan). Places like that will likely fall much further than they did in past cycle corrections (from peak to trough).