REALTOR.com is out with its market data report and analysis for August and has pronounced that the national real estate market stabilized over the summer selling season and is now nearing normal.
Normal . . . Oh! how we have longed to hear that magical word. Normal, where an adequate number of homeowners need to sell and an equally adequate number of home buyers want to buy. Normal, where it takes 45 – 90 days to sell a home and where prices increase in the 3% – 5% a year range. Normal, where smart marketing works, producing leads. And Normal, where home sellers are very interested in saving money on real estate commissions.
Getting to Normal wasn’t easy. We were mired in market sludge as the year began but starting sometime in February, something happened. Home buyers who had been sitting on the fence for so long they had splinters, started to come back into the market. By the Spring we had lurched forward to a new kind of craziness, in places reminiscent of the lunacy that preceded the crash: low to non-existent inventories, multiple offers, over asking price bids, sudden stupid appreciation.
In my own San Diego neighborhood (Hillcrest/Bankers Hill) I remember looking at the MLS one week and seeing 3 active listings. Three. The next week there were 15 as home sellers, hearing the news that crazy buyers were back in the market and that NOW was the time to sell, raced to get in on the action. The effect was like pulling the emergency brake on an out of control car. Everything stopped . . . for a few weeks.
The craziness subsided a bit and we eased into Summer with a little more sanity.
Now we’re into the last months of the year. In a normal market, this is when ordinary Realtors go into hibernation. Nothing happens between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, right? Of course, that’s ordinary thinking for ordinary brokers.
But you guys, you Help-U-Sell guys are anything but ordinary, remember? By their standards you are just plain weird! So this year, after you get home from Success Summit, do the weird stuff you did last time the market was “normal.” Market like mad to the end of the year and hit January with a white board full of new listings and a pipeline overflowing with sellers who wanted to wait until after the first of the year. Because each new listing is an opportunity to market for and get another and another and another, there is no better prep for the Spring Selling Season!
Have a great time at Summit this year, gang. I will be there in spirit and look forward to hearing about all the great stuff that was shared!