COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Close-knit community bolsters real estate market

In recent years, despite the warnings of recession, housing prices have risen. This has created blissful times in the housing market and a boom among real estate professionals. There was a time when having a relative or friend in real estate was not so common. Not anymore. Today the number has grown tremendously and in some cases entire families are in real estate. Who can blame them? Even doctors and lawyers are selling homes.

But the blissful times are no more. According to the Washington Post, the Commerce Department reported that sales of new, single-family homes dropped by 6.6% in June. The decline was more than triple what had been expected and was the largest percentage drop since January.

It is obvious that the housing market is cooling off, but what worries me about this market, especially concerning Armenian Americans living in Glendale and Burbank, is that many people left their careers to ride the lucrative wave of the real estate boom. But the overall cool-off of the market is causing lower incomes, even unemployment, for people working in the real estate market, and rising gas prices are not helping either.

But there is hope. Even though Glendale and Burbank are considered two of the hottest real estate markets in Southern California, with majestic, undeveloped mountains, low crime rate and a lack of congestion due to minor development (thanks to all the efforts of conservationists who have fought hard to protect open space), there is another factor to this steady growth, which has everything to do with community demographics: Armenian Americans.

In the United States, Thanksgiving is an important family holiday due to the fact that at least once a year the entire family gathers to celebrate, no matter where they live. For many Armenian Americans, Thanksgiving is every Friday and Saturday night. So what does this have to do with the current housing market?

Armenians' heavy focus on family and community is no secret. Such a strong sense of kinship and creation of micro communities — is a survival tool due to a history of constant wars and the Armenian genocide of 1915.