BLOG: Real Estate Seasons: Back-To-School

If you have been busy with summer vacations, kids’ swimming lessons and visiting family you may not be up to date on real estate in Laguna Niguel or the OC in general. You may have caught the news release from NAR (National Association of Realtors) which gave much-improved real estate statistics. Numbers of homes in escrow and the number of homes closed are both up from a year ago. In fact the stocks for new home builders went up with the news as well. At the risk of sounding like a broken record the inventory is down 40 percent from the beginning of the year.

Remember that the numbers reported in the media are 30 to 60 days old. I think the most recent NAR numbers were for July figures. To really get the facts call a full time Realtor who is in the market every day. We Realtors feel the pulse of the market and deal with the issues of inventory and interest rates every day.  We interview buyers coming through open houses, fight the battle with appraisers and underwriters, advise sellers how to position their product on the market for a good sale and watch the inventory numbers like a heart monitor.

In my sixteen years of residential real estate I have always noticed that August seems to be the slowest month of the year for real estate activity. The reason is obvious. Families usually want to be moved and in their new homes before school starts and many other potential buyers are at the beach or off on that much-deserved vacation. Now that school is back in session and we have made it past Labor Day, things are starting to loosen up again. It usually seems that just about the third week in September the buyers come back. Traditionally the second listing season of the year has been from mid-September through October with sellers hoping to have their homes in escrow before the end of the year. Keep in mind that short sales and foreclosures know no seasons and can come at any time so the seasons are still skewed at this point.

The other number that has shifted in the last four months is the price of single family home rentals. Rental prices are following sales values in the upward trend at least for now.