On Feb. 2, the largest board of Realtors in Arkansas was created when members of the Metro Area Board of Realtors approved an agreement to merge the three real estate associations covering Benton and Washington counties.
The merger resulted in the formation of the Northwest Arkansas Board of Realtors, a group with around 1,500 members. The boards that agreed to merge are the Bentonville-Bella Vista Board of Realtors, Fayetteville-based Metro Area Board of Realtors and the Rogers Board of Realtors.
The merger proposal was initially defeated by 13 votes at a Jan. …

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions of Canada (OSFI) has raised concerns over lending practices similar to those that gave rise to the crash of the subprime mortgage market in the United States.
According to documents obtained by Bloomberg News, OFSI officials are concerned about increasingly lenders’ increasing liberal practices when it comes to writing mortgages and home equity credit lines. Those practices include not requiring proof of income for those big-ticket loans.
To put that all in context, subprime lending in the U.S. went from an historical rate of …

Since the subprime lending market collapsed around 2007, mortgage reform has been a popular topic in the federal government.
When it comes down to it, the real estate industry in general has become an issue of much discussion in Washington, D.C. The high number of foreclosures has been a concern and the same goes for falling home prices. Furthermore, there has been an emphasis on risk – the notion that lenders ought to write mortgages for people who are likely to live up to the obligations under the loans.
It is a …

A Rogers gift shop owner is on a mission to help America get back to work. Instead of talking about it or telling politicians to do something about it, Beth Cook, owner of B LaRue, is making major changes in how she does business.
B LaRue, a popular gift store that is now located in the Village on the Creeks in Rogers, offers an eclectic selection of gift items and already supports local vendors by selling wares from Arkansas artisans.
Soon, nothing in the shop will be made outside the United States. …

A proposal to merge three boards of Realtors in northwest Arkansas was defeated earlier this month, but the matter will be taken up again in February.
On Jan. 11, the Metro Area Board of Realtors met in Fayetteville and defeated a proposal to merge that board with the Bentonville-Bella Vista Board of Realtors, Rogers Board of Realtors. Members of the Metro Area Board defeated the proposal by 13 votes.
The matter will be taken up for another vote at a noon meeting of the Metro Area Board on Feb. 2 at the …

The past week was a somewhat busy one, so it would be no surprise if you missed a post or two here at First Arkansas News.
There are, of course, ways to prevent missing posts around here. It’s a simple matter to subscribe to our RSS feed, “like” us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or subscribe to email updates. It is free to use any of those services, so pick your favorite one and take advantage of it. Oh, and you can always get a recap of the week’s events …

A good credit score has always been important for anyone wanting to take out a mortgage, but it is a critical requirement for borrowers these days.
Remember a few years ago when taking out a mortgage was easy? If a lender decided a borrower was too risky, the potential homebuyer could likely find a subprime lender or a banker offering some loan options designed to get people with less-than-stellar credit into a home.
After a few years of somewhat freewheeling lending practices, we saw a lot of defaults starting around 2007. Some …

In spite of five straight months of improving market conditions, homes sales in central Arkansas were down in December and for the year.
For the purposes of this report, central Arkansas includes five counties squarely in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area — Faulkner, Grant, Lonoke, Pulaski and Saline — as well as Jefferson and White counties which are not properly within that MSA. In those seven counties, there were 633 single-family, residential units sold in December — down 2.76 percent from 651 closed transactions in December 2010 and …

The numbers are in and show that real estate markets improved last year in both northwest Arkansas and the Jonesboro area. In a nutshell, both average sales prices and the number of units sold improved in the Jonesboro area while more homes were sold in 2011 than in 2010 in northwest Arkansas, but the sales price dropped.
We’ll take a look at northwest Arkansas first. For the purposes of this report, northwest Arkansas is defined as Benton, Carroll, Madison and Washington counties which make up the extreme northwestern corner of the …

Here’s a newsflash – unemployment remains a concern.
In Arkansas, the unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in November – that’s down from 9.3 percent, but is still high for Arkansas. What that number means is that 106,500 people in the Natural State want jobs but don’t have them. That’s a large number, roughly equal to the population of Saline County.
That’s a major problem for the economy for the economy for a number of reasons, but we’ll just deal with one since this column focuses on real estate issues – how can …