Wednesday, May 5, 2010

What's That Ringing I Hear?

Walking around the office during the past week, there was this ongoing, unfamiliar sound -- or at least one that I hadn't heard for some time. Then I realized it was the telephones, which during the past couple of years I was thinking of putting on Ebay due to lack of use.

In addition, there were smiles on the agents' faces...almost like it was the Christmas season. But I looked out the window and saw that there was no snow, so I figured maybe it was just some kind of weird dream.

What a change from a year ago! No more negative real estate articles in the newspapers, lots of calls for showings on listings, and quite a few sales coming across my desk to review. I believe this market may actually have some legs.

From other reports around the state -- and across the country -- activity seems to be up in general. Even after the tax credit went away last week, the momentum seems to be getting stronger instead of fizzling out. And even on higher priced lake properties, a fair amount of transactions are taking place.

Time will tell if this is real or imagined. But there is no doubt that agents are getting a lot of buyers coming back into the market after sitting on the sidelines for a year or two. Many of our agents have more than a hundred buyers, each, who are again returning emails and calls after taking a hiatus. And quite a few of them are feeling a little more urgency, since it looks like prices may be turning back up again...instead of going the other way. The combination of substantial drops in prices and low interest rates -- plus the pent up demand of buyers who have been waiting it out -- may be the ticket to even a faster turnaround than was predicted.

We probably don't want to "count our chickens" -- unless we're really bored -- but, personally, this feels more like the real estate business I remember way back when. I'm just not sure I'll be able to handle all this exuberation day after day...or all the noise!