I hope you had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.  It was one of the few in recent memory where the weatherman cooperated with three nice days in a row.  That was good for us in the real estate business, although the amount of showings and activity was somewhat mixed, which is not unusual for a Holiday weekend.  Often if the weather is nice, people are out enjoying the various family activities.  I had one customer Email me on Friday who said he was going to up here in the area, but I’d only hear from him to show his family property, if it rained. 

 

There is much anticipation this time of the year that we will begin to see an increase in activity that will lead to more showings and eventually to sales.  At our weekly sales meeting on Tuesday morning there was mention of a number of accepted offers that had come together over the last week which is always an encouraging sign and can be an indication of good things to come, but is not something that gets reflected in the “closed” statistics that you read about.  Those “closed” numbers continue to be down from past years in many if not most markets and you will most likely hear or read about the average sales prices being down as well.  This is due to a large extent to bank owned foreclosure properties that are selling in many areas, and are often at substantially discounted prices, which in turn brings the “average” numbers down. 

 

I read an article about a report out this week that talked about a substantial increase in consumer confidence, and its effect on the stock market.  I think the same thing applies to real estate.  In many cases, it is all about perception and timing.  Our job is to help the buying public to understand what is really going on in the market and be able to explain why some of these numbers are down.  Pointing out the differences in our market and how we don’t have many of the negative factors here that are affecting some of the more troubled markets, is what we are up against on an almost daily basis.  Hopefully, the news about real estate will improve over the next few summer months.