Ben Schmidt

Sorry boys and girls, it's that time of year again. It is the first day of school. For all you parents out there, CONGRATS, you made it out alive (I hope)... But what does this time of year mean to you as a home buyer or home seller?

Historically speaking, in the early Fall we always see an increase in production, in both listings and sales. My opinion, I believe it's a two fold reason. (1) Vacations are done, and you now want Timmy and Jill to go to that new school, or maybe they're already in the different school and you need to move so it's closer OR (2) you really want to be in that new home before the snow flies and it gets too cold.

So let's look at the numbers and see if we can try and make sense of this up and down year we're having. If you've been following along you'll remember for the first four months we were having a hot market. Listings and sales were up significantly. But for the last three months and now August, we've been down.

Year-to-date (until end of August) this is what we've seen:

So there is about 135 homes or roughly 10% more inventory on the market than this time last year. With increased inventory and with some banks lowering their mortgages rates we should see an increase in the amount of buyers entering into this Fall marketplace.

If you have any questions for a Realtor give me an email at ben.schmidt@me.com