Every once in awhile, clients want my opinion on miscellaneous issues.
Let me give you a few examples.
A client was involved in a child custody case. He wanted to know whether it would look good for a father in a custody case to be represented by a female lawyer. I can say without any hesitation that no judge who ever decided a case in which I was involved made a decision based on the gender of counsel.
I am often asked career choice questions. I profess no expertise or specialized training in this area. However, I do know what is happening on the ground.
Without a doubt, the health-care professions, such as nursing and certain medical-technical fields and similar areas, are booming. There is no shortage of tuition assistance for nursing. Jobs are abundant, and salaries are high.
Keep away, at least for the moment, from anything related to real estate, including real estate sales, housing rehabilitation and the mortgage market. Sooner or later this field will rejuvenate, but right now, jobs in the real estate industry are not doing well.
One lady asked me about house foreclosures in the Philadelphia and suburban areas. She is trying to buy investment houses at foreclosure sales but reports that the foreclosure inventory is slim.
Mortgage foreclosures in this area are certainly not at the epidemic level as places like Florida, California, Michigan and Nevada. I understand that foreclosures in Nevada are one in 60 houses. Detroit may be as bad, if not worse.
In Pennsylvania, I believe the statistic is one in about 2,000 houses is in foreclosure. There are reasons for this. Pennsylvania has the second oldest population in the country. Florida is first. This means that many people already own their homes outright or only have a small mortgage left to pay.
While real estate prices in the Philadelphia area increased beginning around 2000 and ending around 2006, we never had the wild speculation that hit other real estate markets. Therefore, when real estate prices collapsed on the national level, local real estate prices decreased, but they didn’t totally deflate.
These two factors have insulated Pennsylvania from much of the foreclosure madness that has rocked other parts of the country.
Also, Pennsylvanians are probably just a whole lot smarter than anybody else in the country. •• Stewart J. Berger is an attorney with offices at 7207 Rising Sun Ave. Questions and comments may be addressed to Ask The Lawyer, c/o The Northeast Times, 2512 Metropolitan Drive, Trevose, PA 19053