I had the pleasure of attending the national conference of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HISPANIC REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS, just a few days ago.
 
I stepped into the Las Vegas airport upon my return and the weather was 80 degrees outside; stepped out of DIA to blizzard like conditions, but I love being home.
 
However, even with the drastic forecast change I came back with sunglasses, cause the future looks bright.  After sitting in on some classes, and hearing an economic forecast by chief economists, these are some of the things that I walked away with that I wanted to make sure and share with our membership here. For the love of the membership here, that saying what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas got thrown out the window.
 
Did you know.....
 
That our current tax incentive for 1st time homebuyers is costing $1 Billion dollars a month to fund?
 
Hispanic's denial rate on homeownership financing is 50%?  So 1 out of 2 people that apply get turned down due to the current financing guidelines in our industry.
 
$62K is how much money gets pumped into our economy during and after a home purchase, from movers, to furniture, and actually only about 10% is specifically paid out to our industry.
 
From 2000-2005 FHA made up only 3% of the market for financing.
 
September of 2009 40% of the financing was FHA and 42% was Fannie Mae.
 
Another, statistic that I found astounding given the difficulty that I have experienced lately in finding my 1st time buyer's a home, was that a whopping 67% of homes are being sold to owner occupants.
 
I know that we've always heard that there is power in numbers, but this conference was especially true; we had 1300 attendees sign up online, and an additional 400 at the door.
 
So while we know that both the U.S. and world economy are in a recession; we are definitely in a recovery stage!