The weather has bounced back cold for now, and it looks like the rain is over for the next week or so.
The real estate outlook in a nutshell is that available inventory is decreasing, and prices are increasing steadily, if modestly. Coupled with the fact that interest rates seem likely to rise, it seems unavoidable that housing prices are increasing. What it all means is that if you are thinking about buying, it will likely cost you more to wait than to act now.
In many ways, winter is a good time to look, if you don’t mind the weather. Sellers usually are a little more negotiable, as they are facing a few months before the market starts to heat up again in the spring. With the leaves down, you can more easily evaluate the property and its views. One of our biggest problems is that folks want to look on the weekends, and many rental cabins are occupied on the weekends and can’t be shown. That, too, is usually better in the winter.
If you’ve been thinking about selling, but have been discouraged by the market, it’s time to take another look. To put it bluntly, we need listings. In addition to the fact that inventory is down overall, the inventory of good listings is probably lower than it has been at any time over the past ten years. Get in touch and I’ll be glad to give you my honest assessment of what your property will bring in today’s market.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but what sells listings these days is professional photography and syndication. That’s the process of pushing the listings out to as many websites as possible. I think we do the best job of doing that in the mountains, and if you take a look at the information on this link, I think you’ll agree.
This graphic is a few months old, so it may not be completely accurate as we are constantly fine tuning the program. It’s expensive. But it does sell houses. The research shows that something like 95% of all buyers search for homes on the Internet.