“What the national news media reports, and what it says about real estate is not true in Claremore.”

Johnny Leonard, a 40-year real estate veteran in Rogers County, makes that observation, echoing facts and figures issued by the Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors that indicate the area housing market is healthy and growing as opposed to the national trend.

Bettie Sue McCaw, a broker associate of Coldwell Banker RaderGroup in Claremore, offered a similar perspective on the county and metropolitan-area real estate market in a story printed in the Daily Progress Edition March 30.

“The picture one gets on the national news doesn’t come close to painting a true portrait of what is happening on the local level,” McCaw said.

While the Multiple Listing Service of the Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors shows a slight decrease in homes sold during 2007 compared to 2006 (three percent), the average home sale price increased three percent in Rogers County and nearly five percent in the Greater Tulsa area.

Leonard’s not surprised at those facts and figures.

“In the (19)70s late and early (19)80s, we would see people hitchhiking outside our office here,” he said. In those days, the hitchhikers were traveling Route 66 from out east to wherever they could find jobs.

Much like today, “Nationally, we were fighting a bad economy due to the oil prices and high interest rates,” Leonard said. However, in Oklahoma people were still working, houses were being built, bought and sold, much like today.

Leonard remembers former

county planning commissioner Bud Williams referring to the postive

economic environment of Rogers County and the surrounding area as “The Golden Triangle.”

It still is today, Leonard said.

Rogers County households earn one of the top median incomes in the state, outpacing the national household earnings estimates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Census estimates and projects show population growth could possibly continue to outstrip available housing.