I thought it would be interesting (to me and hopefully to you, Gentle Reader) to follow the market month by month, comparing it to last year. What does all this mean? Not what it appears to mean on the surface, my friends. Believe it or not, we are in a very hot market. It's a smaller market than it was just recently, but homes are selling in multiple offer bidding wars. Yes, really. Looking at the numbers you see drops in the number of houses on the market, sold, and average prices in all 5 of our zip codes. However, Eagle Rock had a higher average sales price in May than it did in April. Anecdotally, we are having bidding wars even now, something you wouldn't be aware of by just looking at the numbers. Unless, of course, you have been a buyer or a buyer's agent in the last 8 years.Today it matters even more how good a negotiator the agent is, and how motivated the buyer and seller are. If you want to sell your house, is it important to you how much you sell it for? I would guess the answer is yes, duh. It's in the strategies of pricing, folks, the same as it's always been-but now it's even more important to have your agent on your side, ready to do battle for your price but ready to change that price strategically. It's super important to be really honest with your agent about what you will and won't do. And that isn't based on your wish price. Plus you do have to be sensitive to what similar homes are listing and selling for. And I said "sensitive to" not "enslaved by." Oh, and you probably want to work with an agent you trust and feel like you can confide in.You'll notice a greater variation in numbers in May as opposed to April. I think that's largely due to timing during the COVID crisis than a true market. A lot of people are losing or are afraid of losing their jobs who didn't see that happening in March when we thought/hoped we were only going to be quarantined a couple of weeks. Even if we see the real estate market contract to the same extent that we're seeing the employment figures contract which we're hearing might be 20%, there are still a lot of employed folks who want or need to move. And a lot of houses that need to change hands because of life changes-death, divorce, marriage, having children, having children grow up and move out-the usual things.
