Mélange

More thoughts from Greg McNey of American Signature Mortgage...

Mélange

“Mélange” – what a pleasant sounding word (mey-lahnj). It’s of French origin and essentially means a mish-mash, a hodge-podge, a mixture. Audi has used it to name a paint color for their A6 – a browny-grayish neutral tone, which is what you get when you mix several colors together. It’s a soupy mess.

Real Estate news is often colored with that same Audi paint. While there are certainly pockets of deep, dark difficulty in several places throughout the US, there are also plenty of vivid success stories being told in cities large and small. The problem is that real estate, an absolutely local “event,” has become the stuff of national news. The stories are blending together, the dark tones overwhelming the brighter hues, and the result of this mélange of data is that browny-gray soupy mess.

Take for instance the State of Tennessee. Recently, the state ranked 17th in number of foreclosures per household. But, a closer inspection of the statistics shows
that more than half of the state’s problem lies in Memphis. Cities like Knoxville and Nashville have foreclosure rates that are less than 1/3 of what occurs in Memphis. And suburban areas, such as Williamson County in middle Tennessee, have experienced even fewer foreclosures than these larger cities. But, Williamson County homeowners and would-be buyers are hounded daily by the news that as residents of the state of Tennessee, they’re on the brink of financial ruin.

As with all news, we must consider the source and, when necessary, do our own research. When data is averaged, you get average information. Learn what’s going on in your city, your community, your neighborhood. Mélange really isn’t as pretty as it may sound – unless you’re talking about a glossy one-owner 2000 Audi A6 2.7 Turbo with low miles.