Fort Meade BRAC - Base Realignment and Closure News

Oh no, the first time homebuyertax credit is over and you missed it, right?Well, if you are a member of the Armed Forces, Foreign Service, Federal Governmentor the "intelligence community" and you were serving over seas for a period of 90 days or more during the period of January 1, 2009 and May 1, 2010 youmay still qualify for the credit! Information and details are available at the IRS Website. Obviously this is great news for the Fort Meade real estate market in Marylandand o... Read Full Post

A recent article in the Baltimore business journal indicates that the US Cyber Command; which is"tasked with safeguardingthe nation's critical networks as well as coordinating all offensive cyber attacks",is moving full steam ahead. On May 21, 2010General Keith Alexander,Director, National Security Agency/Central Security Service was sworn in as the head of the new unit. It is estimated that this new command, housed at Fort Meade MD, will bringabout 1,000 new positions to our ar... Read Full Post

Military moving "season" is right around the corner and the big news in the Fort Meade real estate market is a shortage of rental homes. While in years past we've had an ample supply of homes to show relocating customers, this year the inventory is unusually low. Rental homes that are properly prepared and priced are receiving multiple applications in days. This inventory trend, along with record low prices and interest rates, may provide incentive for more military and DOD familie... Read Full Post

As someone who relies on the Internet for most of my news and information I have been increasingly frustrated with the lack of updates on the Fort Meade BRAC relocation of DISA employees. I've watched the BRAC cam show good progress on the construction and I've heard the buzz on the street that touts the DISA move as the shot in the arm that we need to turn the Anne Arundel county real estate market around and start an upward movement in the quantity of homes sold and an increasein home valu... Read Full Post

Being in the military or government service has it's unique rewards and challenges. One of them being the need to move every 2 - 5 years. So what happens when you invest in Fort Meade real estate and then are transferred (sometimes with very short notice) to another duty station via PCS orders and are caught with a home value that is less than when you purchased? We're seeing many home owners in the area opting to rent their homes and ride out current market conditions with the hopes that... Read Full Post

Just took a look at the final sales states for Anne Arundel County in July and they are a bit surprising. Based on the volume of sales we are seeing on our family team I would have guessed we had another record month for Fort Meade real estate. While the county as a whole was up 17% the areas immediately surrounding Fort Meade saw a decline in volume and home values. Bring on the BRAC! I pull these reports manually from the MLS sold data. I've compared them to the monthly reports provided... Read Full Post

Fort Meade BRACisundoubtedly the hottest topic affecting Anne Arundel County real estate in 2009. Despite all the buzz it is very difficult to find one source that provides the answers to the most asked questions which are: (1) How may people/jobs will be coming to Fort Meade as a result of BRAC? The answer is 5,400 which includes 4,300 DISA military, civilian, and contractor personnel. While I've seen huge numbers bantered about on other real estate web sitesand BLOGs (up to 30,000) t... Read Full Post

We've seen a huge increase in activity that we really expected to come out in the stats this quarter but it didn't. In hindsight it looks like the increase we are feeling as Fort Meade area real estate professionals is actually due to the decrease in the number of Anne Arundel County real estate agents. Our volume has almost doubled year to date and we've had to grow our team by one additional full-time Realtor and a part-time assistant. Here's the most recent analysis of both 1st and 2nd... Read Full Post

On October 10th President Bush signed The Veterans Benefits Improvement Act which adds some ground breaking improvements for home owners and home buyers who are eligible for a VA loan. Most notably.... During the housing boom many veteran's purchased homes using conventional financing to make their offers more favorable to sellers or to purchase in a price range that was higher than the current VA loan amount. Those loans sometimes came with terms that were not as good as they could ... Read Full Post

HR 6694 the FHA Seller-Financed Downpayment Reform and Risk-Based Pricing Authorization Act of 2008 bill was approved by the House Financial Services Committee on September 16th. This is a great step forward in bringing back a reasonable, balanced and managable solution that will allow Sellers to contribute some or all of the downpayment to a buyer that wants to purchase their home. This program rasied great controversy and was deemed part of the downfall of the housing market as it inc... Read Full Post