The fall market activity that I knew would be measurable is looking more significant every day. While I contend that the best buying decisions are made later in the fall when sellers find more motivation, there has been a flurry of sales activity over the past two weeks. The month of August was benevolent in handing out tans, but sales were much more difficult to come by. That slow month was one of the factors that made me believe the fall would be vibrant here, and the market has indeed responded with no fewer than 5 pending contracts, all of which appear to have been written in the past several weeks. If the fall market continues to be strong through December, as I suspect it will be, we could be in for year end numbers that make 2009 look as anemic as sexless nun (with plagiarist apologies to Mr. Lewis).
It’s encouraging to see a wide spread of properties and price points that are entertaining both offers and pending contracts. The most expensive property that is under contract per our MLS is a listing on North Shore Drive for $4.99MM. This beautiful estate was under contract earlier this year before it ultimately fell through, and is now under contract once again after a few price reductions to the current list price. Another lakefront is under contract, this one a beautiful parcel with adequate house in Geneva Bay Estates listed at $2.195MM. This property was a particular favorite of mine after several price reductions brought the price to a very attractive level for a property with both an ideal location and 100′ of level lakefrontage. Another lakefront in Fontana just went under contract with an asking price of just under $2MM, making for three new lakefront sales in the past couple weeks. This is a market showing signs of strength, and I can’t help but think there will be two or three more sales before the year is out.
The lake access market is also getting some play, with properties under contract priced from $175k to $800k. All said, the Lake Geneva vacation home market has single family sales pending priced from $175k to $4.99MM. The wide berth of the market activity is a positive sign, more so than a select pricing niche receiving all of the attention would ever be. There are several other offers being negotiated at the moment, and I fully expect to see another property or two go pending within the next week or so. The market flexibility that I wrote about on Monday should be on full display through the middle of December, and I’m anticipating discovering the sales prices of these pending sales to gauge the level of seller motivation.
New inventory continues to trickle onto the market, and I’ve personally been busy working on two new listings that should hit the open market in the next week or so. The lakefront has added a few more offerings, but nothing too terrible exciting of late. Look for the entry level lakefront market to show signs of life over the upcoming weeks, as the buying activity that is prevalent at the moment will almost certainly find its way to the very weary entry level market. The increased sales of late do provide at least one reason not to wait until my target buying window of mid-November through mid-December, as the threat of waiting is simply that the property you’ve been contemplating may be sold to a buyer who has more motivation than you do. One simple, but overlooked, reason that the real estate markets declined over recent years has a lot to do with fear- but not the sort you’re thinking of.
If you take away the fear that a property will be bought before you have a chance to buy it, then there’s very little motivation to buy something. In recent months and years, buyers have grown complacent. Content to watch properties grow stale on the market, buyers find themselves waiting on properties in hopes of securing a lower price. With no worries that another buyer will purchase the home first, motivation is at a dire minimum. When markets find jolts of life and properties sell, it’s quite reasonable to assume that the properties selling are properties that have been being watched by other buyers who have been too timid or too calculating to actually make a play on that particular property. I guess that’s all to say that waiting to buy until the timing is just right is a fantastically calculating way to approach real estate, but it can also be a way to be beat out on a property that’s as perfect for you as it is for the buyer who harnessed her motivation and actually closed the deal.