How do you know if the market conditions are improving? There are the regular indicators to watch to judge whether market momentum is building:

General Market Indicators

Number of Sales is steady or rising.

Pricing is steady or rising.

Average Days on Market is low and dropping.

Months of inventory is tight and dropping (currently 3.0 in NSDCC)

Mortgage rates aren’t jumpy.

Bidding Wars.

The professor says so.

But those are mostly feel-good stats and known well after the fact.  How can we know which way the market is breaking in real time?

You can expect the well-kept, beautifully staged homes to sell, and most anything with an attractive price should go quickly too.  Those with a recent tune-up will be more popular, and having a hot-ticket item will help – great location, one-story, newer, top schools, culdesac, beachy, and walkable.

The best tell-tale signs of market momentum is how the inferior homes do. Make a note when you see a house in this category, and if a few of these go pending around you, then you know the market is starting to cook:

Homes in bad locations.

Houses with long market times (90+ days)

Houses in original condition.

Anti-staging – a house full of old furniture.

Funky floor plans.

Tough listing agent

A house listed for a price you think is ridiculous.

Wait until the sale is closed to confirm the actual sales price before jumping to any radical conclusions – maybe the sellers had to give one away.  Besides, it might only mean that a few weak, anxious buyers dived in too high, too soon, and their agents didn’t stop them.

If you see inferior homes starting to pile up – especially those who lowered their price with no luck – then you know the buyers are winning.  When you see a series of inferior homes sell for retail or close, then you can expect the sellers’ confidence to be brimming, and momentum on their side.

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