My reason for hope despite the worsening financial crisis.

 It’s been five years now since the Reno-Sparks real estate market fell off the cliff.

The market reached it’s peak in July 2005, and It’s been downhill ever since.  Just when I was starting to feel that our market was making progress, and perhaps hit a bottom of some sort (lower end); inventory balloons.

No bottom in sight, unemployment is pretty high, foreclosures in Reno-Sparks are up and people don’t have much room for spending.

Yet I feel hopeful.

I don’t think it’s some manufactured-out-of-touch-reality-think-positive type of premature hope.  But I feel a calming jilt of renewed hope and faith—that even though the worst might yet to come, we’re going to be alright. I don’t know exactly how but we’re going to be alright.

A friend of mine once told her son, “I can’t control the hurt others can inflict on you, but I do have control on the pain I can cause you.”

This financial recession is beginning to wipe away my sometimes relationship-dimmed-eyes; where I’m 15 minutes early to a short sale consulation meeting but 30 minutes late for my “Costco date” with my wife.

It taught me that the process is equally important as the end. Yes, to provide but also to be there—physically AND emotionally. And not surprisingly, being in those rare moments is more rewarding than a $700,000 closing.

That sometimes, scraping together to make the family budget can draw us closer than swiping away the card to a new bedroom set.

I guess it’s not all bad with this financial crisis.