Turning the corner

Aha! She's a realtor...I'm getting those looks now as neighbors and others approach me about real estate and local questions. It's a great feeling since I felt fairly anonymous for a couple of months. But, it's also a sign that the tide is indeed turning and that Buyers are getting interested in the market again. I first noticed it on Mar 12, all of a sudden, the phones got busier and people started stopping by the office. There were people showing up at Open Houses too. Of course we have a backlog of 5 months of homes here, normal is 4 months and a very quick market as we have been having was only 2 and a half months. When the inventory gets low, prices skyrocket. Now the inventory is a little high but not precariously high. Sellers aren't able to escalate prices too high, but the odd phenomenen is that there are fewer houses selling, but the average sales price is continuing to climb. New Homes Sales are down and the Builders are very quickly responding by lowering their prices or adding value to the price with free upgrades, help on closing costs etc. They are also best friends with the Realtors again! Not quite fair, since some of them such as US Homes and Lennar (to name a couple) remained true to their established relationship with the Realtors. Many builders cut off the agents when the market is hot. I would say that more of them are also accepting Investors now than they were a couple of years ago. Once the inventory gets down to 4 months these incentives will probably be gone. Then it will be a more equal market. The fed rate hike isn't really causing problems for the Purchasers either since the current rates already had the expected hike built in to the price.