Ah, October. I’m not intentionally ignoring the last few days of September, but I am looking forward to October. There’s a peace that comes with realizing I’ve officially and completely blown all of this summer to bits. It’s over for me, this last lost summer. And so I’ll feel confident that October will be better because October doesn’t come with any summer pretense. September does, but September was pretty lame, at least on the weekends. I was too busy to enjoy it anyway, even if September had been better. For now, let’s look forward to October, a month that isn’t summer at all but still isn’t anything like winter.
Real Estate at the lake in September has been good, though only great if you’re counting the lakefront market as our only segment. The lake was on fire this month, with a sale here and a sale there, and for a few days it looked as though there was a sale everywhere. That activity on the lake continues today and will likely continue into October. One of my great fears back when the markets were particularly roiled was that after brief spurts of activity we’d find ourselves lacking the next wave of buyers. Today, I fear no such thing. I continue to not fully understand the buying impetus at the moment, but I’ll rest some knowing that value is out there and when value meets motivation there is liquidity.
That’s the lakefront market though, the king of our market kingdom, and the rest of our markets have not fared nearly as well. The lake access market is okay, just plodding along taking a few scalps here and there, but there is nothing overly exciting about it. The lakefront condo market remains as it has been, as does Geneva National. Abbey Springs has had a bit of activity of late, but again, nothing when compared with the outright frenzy of the residential lakefront market.
So all of that to say this: The time to buy is sort of right now. But that’s only if you’ve found exactly what you’re looking for. If you have found that perfect piece of vacation home bliss, then grab hold of it. But, if, on the other hand, you have not yet found what it is you’re looking for, then it’s a great time to wait. Yes, to wait. October is a wonderful month for crunching leaves and eating apples and wearing boots, but it’s only a great month for real estate if you’ve found something that excites you. If you’ve been watching the market for months, perhaps years, and you’re thinking about jumping in right now with both feet I’d simply ask you to wait.
To wait for what? Well, to wait for better values. October, the month that is neither summer nor winter is a month that finds most everyone in a fair mood. November, on the other hand, gets dark, early. It rains a bit more. The colors from October have been raked into piles and burned, or if you’re at home in some wretched city or suburb, stuffed into big plastic bags and left at the curb. If September plays like summer and October is nothing but fall, then November leans heavily towards being winter. The weather will hold, sort of, sure. But moods will change and thoughts will shift, and we’ll be thinking about winter whether we really want to or not.
With those thoughts of winter come thoughts of real estate hell. Fewer showings, less scenery, tax bills on the very near horizon. This is when buyer’s would do well to pounce, during the dark days of November and the early days of December, during these days when next summer seems, because it is, about as far away as it’ll ever be. It’s time we do some homework together and figure out what you’re looking for and paint a picture in our minds as to what exactly it might look like. Once we have that goal in mind, we’ll eat some apples and crunch some leaves. Then, when everyone else has gone home, we’ll drop a few comp bombs on the market and see if anyone notices.