Two family-owned, independent real estate companies are merging into one firm. Snapper Shuler Kenner Real Estate in Lynden, WA has joined The Muljat Group and will take its name. The SSK Real Estate office, which has 22 agents, will be renamed The Muljat Group North, but there will be few other changes, said Jerry Blankers, branch broker.

The merger was partly the result of a contractual obligation. Paul Kenner, one of the partners at SSK Real Estate, was bought out and the company was required to give up the Snapper Shuler Kenner name. The remaining partners decided to align themselves with another company, reaching an agreement with Frank Muljat. The Blankers family will continue to operate the branch as they have for the past 35 years, with Jerry Blankers remaining as branch broker.

US Housing Market - The number of homes listed for sale declined in many U.S. cities in November, but more houses are likely to hit the market early in 2010. The supply of homes available for sale in 35 major metropolitan areas at the end of November was down 2.4% compared with a month earlier, according to RealTrac.

Inventories typically decrease modestly in November compared with the previous month, and especially during our holiday seasonality period between Thanksgiving and New Years. Over the past 25 years, the average change has been a decline of 1.8%.

The November inventory in the 35 metro areas was down 28% compared with the year-earlier period for all single-family homes, condominiums and town houses listed on local multiple-listing services.

One stat that's not figured into all of this are the number of homes that banks are preparing to put on the market, without that it's impossible to pin down what effect that will have on inventory levels in the new year. As of the end of October, banks and mortgage investors had 639,000 foreclosed homes for sale across the country. However, it should be noted that most of these bank-owned homes are mostly concentrated in Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada.

I think that with the holiday season between Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, many homeowners have been awaiting for signs of a stronger market before trying to sell. They are likely to list their homes early in the new year to attract buyers seeking to qualify for a federal tax credit on purchases of homes made before the end of April 2010. I also believe a lot of home owners will want to market their homes with the world's attention focused on this area during the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics in February 2010. There is going to be a lot more inventory coming on the market by February or March 2010.

Whatcom County - According to local data compiled by First American Core Logic, subprime mortgage lending formed a relatively small part of the local Whatcom County real estate picture. Their data shows that only about 1,000 subprime loans were outstanding in the Whatcom County area as of July 2009, compared to about 35,000 conventional loans.

The data shows that almost 35 percent of those subprime loans were more than 60 days delinquent as of July, putting those homes at high risk of foreclosure. Since there was only about 1,000 subprime loans over all, the effect on the local real estate market was much smaller than what happened in other areas of the country.

Among the 35,000 conventional loans in Whatcom County, less than 3 percent were 60 or more days delinquent as of July. A rebound in our market is much more likely and we could actually start to get back to normal by the Spring of 2010. Don't expect any of those double digit gains we saw five years ago, but a normal market would be a good sign.

Nationwide, the delinquency rate on conventional prime mortgage loans is 6 percent, while the rate on subprime loans is close to 40 percent.