With all of the reliance we place upon objective data for assessing the market, sometimes a little bit of “old fashioned” subjective impression is worthwhile input to the process. Now that we are achieving some distance from the annual holiday period where people are generally thinking more about gifts and drink than houses, this week really starts the first “real” week of the 2010 housing market.
During yesterday’s Brokers’ Open, I made a real point of trying to talk with as many agents as I could about what their present level of activity is, how many homes do they have queued up for the market, how many real buyers do they have, and what is their sense of the “mood” of their clients regarding buying/selling. Interestingly, the answers from the 3-4 agents that I talked with who do a relatively active level of business, all conveyed a sense of optimism and forthcoming heightened activity in the market.
Many mentioned that they have several buyers who are pre=approved by lenders and now ready to jump into the market. No one said that they had received an unusual amount of callers from probable sellers, although we have personally received many who want to start discussing a forthcoming move. None are motivated by financial distress, which is very positive.
I had a long discussion by an agent who tends to do a lot of business in the upper end of the market, as we do, and we both agreed that their is still a significant compression of prices occurring in this segment.
A couple of agents talked about 2010 starting out as a “banner” year for them, if the present level of activity continues. Time will tell, however, we have also had a very, very strong surge of activity in recent weeks from clients who have either made a purchase decision with us already, plan to in the near future, or are getting ready to sell their home.
We are feeling cautiously bullish!
