Skywest will be back in Cedar City. As a former employee of the Cedar City Airport I have mixed feelings about this. I’m going to just list positive and negative points of having Skywest back in Cedar City.

There is a whole political side to this which I will try to stay out of.

Benifits
1. Reliable service - Since I worked at the Cedar City Airport while both Skywest and Mesa Airlines serviced flights I can say that Skywest was my more reliable then Mesa. They also had the advantage of being able to bus people to St. George if they had problems in Cedar City.
2. Larger Planes - Skywest flys 30 Passangers planes with a flight attendant and bathroom while Mesa only flew a 19 passanger plane with no in flight service.
3. Local Roots - Skywest has deep roots in our community, it will be a lot easier for Skywest to come back then it was for Mesa to start in a hostile enviroment.
4. Customer Service - This one is self explanitory.

Negatives -
1. Cost - Not only are flights more expensive with Skywest the amount the government subsidizes is also higher.
2. Connections - Skywest has contracted to do 2 flights a day to Salt Lake City. Mesa was flying to Pheonix, Salt Lake and Las Vegas. This makes connecting with Skywest much harder and also increases cost as Salt Lake is typically an expensive airport to fly out of.

I found this great article that goes into great detail to explain what was going on over the last few years in the Mortgage market.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/SuperModels
/AreWeHeadedForAnEpicBearMarket.aspx?page=1

Many of you may be thinking why do I care? Well this is by far the biggest band to play in Cedar City, Utah ever! It was a great concert and I hope this means more bands will want to come to our great little city.

The Stone Gate grand opening was held Saturday the 22nd of September. It was a huge sucess and hopefully some of the many registration forms will turn into sales. We had an amazing turn out considering it was raining and windy all day. We had lots of excitement, we had an idiot real estate agent recruiting clients from within our model! (No Class) We had lots of families stop by to see our 5 bedroom 3 bath home for under $200,000. Reba Rocket from the radio station 94.9 was on site helping to promote the event.

In all it was just a very good day for Trophy Homes new project Stone Gate!

I found this kind of cool. The guy who bought Barry Bonds home run ball has set up a website and will allowing people to vote and decide what will be done with it. You get to choose between 3 options. You can send it to the Hall of Fame, Stamp it with an * (in referance to Barry Bonds Steriod Use) or you can vote to blast it into outer space.

I personally want to voke to stamp it with an * then send it to CoopersTown but that wasn’t an option.

So today I was working my day away when one of our City Council members walks into my office. This doesn’t happen every day! To make a long story short he is running for re-election and wanted to put a couple signs on our property. We spoke breifly and then I put 2 and 2 together. This is Steve Wood. He is the guy that in one breath speaks of Cedar City needing affordable/Work Force housing and in the next doubles our impact fees and raises our prices by nearly $6,000 dollars a unit.

Are you serious? You double our impact fees over night and you want us to support your re election? No thank you! I will take my chances with anyone but you.

Everytime you turn on the news you get some sad story about the state of the Mortgage industry. I want to write about some of the issues, the causes of those issues, and some companies that aren’t having those issues.

So what exactly are the issues? Well we have multiple issues at hand right now. The first is Sub Prime lending. Many companies did what are called sub prime loans. These are usually loans to individuals with no documentation or stated income. They are given to people with lower credit scores, and they usually carry a higher interest rate. An example was a man I sold a 550k home to. He did a no doc, loan and had a 610 credit score. They loaned him 100% of the homes purchase price. I personally have no sympathy for any loan company willling to loan 100% of a homes purchase price, with no income verification, poor credit, and they didn’t even bother to check and see if he had a job. Guess what that home is now in forclosure? Are we really suprised? Im not!

Another issue are what is called option arms. An option arm gives you the flexability to pay any of 4 different payments. The first is what is called a Neg-Amortization. This means you pay less then the Interest Only Payment. The second is Interest Only. The 3rd is a 30 year fixed payment and the last is the 15 year fixed payment. This one is less the mortgage company and more the buyers. What tends to happen is they start to neg-am there loan and they end up oweing more money then the house is worth. At this point they cannot sell and many people feel that letting the bank own it is the best way out.

When you mix those 2 large problems with many many smaller problems you can see what type of trouble we are in. We have irresponcible lendors lending to irresponcible buyers. Hardly the ideal situation!

There is hope! Many of these companies are now bankrupt or have scalled back these wild programs. We also still have FHA, VA, and other traditional loans as well. I currently am working with a loan officer that has a variety of loans to offer. His company was never involved in these high risk loans and they seem to be taking this in stride. In fact, I think business has decreased as the irresponcible lendors are phased out.

Here is my advice to buyers. Go to your lendor and get pre qualified. Make sure you have some money to put down and realize if you have less then 20% down you will have to pay private mortgage insurance. Know the terms of your agreement. If you are on a teaser rate you need to nest egg enough money to cover the increased payment. You are an adult, know what you are signing.

Well that is about it. This rant is over! Sorry but my sympothy meter is at an all time low!

Today I started thinking about the events of 9-11. I remember being in Air Force “tech school” and watching what happened. To this day I still remember the sick feeling I had.

I wanted to post a video tribute to those who died on that day.

I did not make this video but I do feel it captures some of what I feel.