Recently in my office I listened to a story about a Buyer who had just missed out on the house they wanted to call home.  How?  They waited several days after the home came on the market and by the time they wrote their offer, someone else had beat them to the punch.  I think in today's market it is easy to over-strategize or get lackadaisical and forget one of the fundamental rules in real estate: "time is of the essence".

Even in today's slower paced market if you identify the home that fits you and your family, you still must move quickly.  If you are interested in a house, there is a chance that someone else may be too.  Often in today's market people hesitate to write an offer immediately because they do not want to pay full price.  I understand that.  However, if it is a home you really want, I would suggest writing your offer immediately.  Simply make the offer that you feel is appropriate for the home.  At a minimum, it shows the Seller your interest and raises the likelihood that you will be involved in negotiations on the home, even if there is another offer. 

If you decide to hold off on your offer and are willing to take the risk of losing the home to another offer, be sure that it is over a dollar value that you can live with if you lose the home.  If you are buying the home for the long term (as you should be) maybe a $10,000 to $20,000 reduction in price is not as important as getting the house that feels like home.

LEED ~ Leadership in Energy and Enviromental Design:  Widely known program on a national basis. LEED is offered through the U.S. Green Building Council. Similar to Built Green, it offers different levels of green certification, which are based on features in a development.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.

LEED is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings' performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

Who uses LEED?

Architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, lenders and government officials all use LEED to help transform the built environment to sustainability. State and local governments across the country are adopting LEED for public-owned and public-funded buildings; there are LEED initiatives in federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Energy, and State; and LEED projects are in progress in 41 different countries, including Canada, Brazil, Mexico and India.

The article is by Michael Shires:

This year's rankings continue the methodology used last year, which emphasizes the robustness of a region's growth and allows the rankings to include all of the metropolitan statistical areas for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports monthly employment data. They are derived from three-month rolling averages of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics "state and area" unadjusted employment data reported from November 1998 to January 2009.

The data reflect the North American Industry Classification System categories, including total nonfarm employment, manufacturing, financial services, business and professional services, educational and health services, information, retail and wholesale trade, transportation and utilities, leisure and hospitality, and government.

"Large" areas include those with a current nonfarm employment base of at least 450,000 jobs. "Midsize" areas range from 150,000 to 450,000 jobs. "Small" areas have as many as 150,000 jobs. One community in last year's top small MSA group grew enough that they are now considered a midsize MSA: Charleston, WV.

This year's rankings use four measures of growth to rank all areas for which full data sets were available from the past 10 years -- 336 regions in total. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, no longer reports employment detail for MSAs with employment levels less than 30,000 in its monthly models, resulting in shifts as MSAs were dropped. As a result, this year's rankings can be directly compared to the 2008 rankings for MSAs for the large and midsize categories, but there are some adjustments needed for year-to-year comparisons in small MSA category. In instances where the analysis refers to changes in ranking order, these adjustments have been taken into account.

The index is calculated from a normalized, weighted summary of: 1) recent growth trend: the current and prior year's employment growth rates, with the current year emphasized (two points); 2) mid-term growth: the average annual 2003-2008 growth rate (two points); 3) long-term trend: the sum of the 2003-2008 and 1998-2002 employment growth rates multiplied by the ratio of the 1998-2002 growth rate over the 2003-2008 growth rate (two points); and 4) current year growth (one point).