The weather has been front page news all over this week, with flooding in the Midwest and hurricanes in the Gulf. Colorado Springs weather hasn't been catastrophic, but it is always interesting. I took these pictures last night as tornado warnings were being issued for the eastern part of El Paso county. We don't get a lot of tornado activity here, and I guess there was one questionable funnel cloud out near Ellicott when all was said and done, but the skies were pretty interesting to watch. The fascinating thing to me was how blue the sky directly overhead was compared to what was happening out east.

There have been storms of a different kind brewing in the financial markets, with entire lending industry being shaken up by it. The net result, at least as of today, is that mortgage interest rates have actually dropped over the past week in part at least in response to the Fed lowering one of their benchmark rates. As of today, the going rate locally is back to 6.375%, at least for now. With over 7100 homes for sale, this is certainly good news for us locally.

Fallout from the current housing "recession" is different for every community. Locally, we have about 8% of our inventory in some sort of "distressed" situation (ie bank owned, preforeclosure, HUD or VA repo, etc). Overall, this is not too bad. I have heard reports from other areas of the country where this number can top 50%. With lower interest rates and a few good breaks from the economic news, we could be well past this situation by next spring.