Even as the Case Shiller index reported the eighth successive month of home-price declines, the Dow is posting a multi-year high of 12,600.

For now, it seems that the tide of mortgage defaults has been stemmed. The improved underwriting that occurred after the 2008 market crash has resulted in a better-than-average quality of loans...

Beaufort County homeowners deserve a break on the commission fee that they pay to real-estate brokers for listing and selling their properties.

Those who argue in favor of the Due Diligence Fee say that it will weed out disingenuous, unqualified buyers by requiring them to have some 'skin in the game.'

Gone are the days when a real-estate broker can convince his or her clients to price their properties using the traditional method of adjusting value based on the past six months of comparable sales.

Already this November, according to the National Association of Realtors Residential Sold Report, 12 homes have been sold countywide, nine of those in Washington.

To illustrate this fact, I have taken a snapshot of Washington's market activity in August, September and October, by generating a Residential Sold Report via the Realtors' MLS database.

Thanks to the federal government (I've got to give credit where credit is due) every property in Beaufort County is presently eligible for 100-percent financing through the USDA Rural Housing Program.

This month's Market Report is simply a reminder that our financial environment looks a bit different than it did five years ago, and it may for a while to come.

For the July 2010 Market Report I decided to shift focus from the national real estate market to the local market. I zoomed-in on Beaufort County, divided the county by area, and took unique snapshots of market activity compiled for each area during the 22 months leading up to the Sept. 2008 market collapse, and the 22 months following it.

The world economy is held fast, it seems, in a Catch-22 situation: The recession was caused and is being drawn out by the housing bust, and now the recession is expected to cause more downward pressure on home values.

Though the month of March saw a 27-percent increase in new home sales, I'm unconvinced we're close to real recovery. More likely, this rise in sales was the short-lived result of temporary circumstances: the beginning of spring, the April 5 increase of the FHA's upfront premium and the last weeks of the Extended Homebuyer Tax Credit.

With the rapidly approaching Extended Homebuyer Tax Credit deadline, rising mortgage rates, an explosion of inventory and the possibility of a labor-market recovery, if you want to own property and are financially ready, April is the month to make a move.