The Market is Slow but…

Anthony: The market’s slow, actually terribly slow. It slowed in an odd manner because not only there’s a substantial decrease in the amount of buyers, but it’s also in a situation where there’s a huge lack of sellers. Sellers are just not motivated to list. I think that many of them are hesitant to list because they’re saying, “Wait, I don’t want to give up my 3% interest rate and then have to get into a 7% interest rate. I’d rather just stay put.” Here’s my answer to some of these folks. I want to just talk to you a little bit about the market, and I know I have a national audience here, and I literally talk to people all over the country.

The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was texted with a friend in Sacramento, California. They’re all saying the same thing. Sorry, I’m so fanatical. I’m reaching out to get a leaf off of my car, off of the windshield wiper. Couple of things that I want to point out. Number one, historically speaking, one thing I’ve noticed after all these years of being in the business is the market doesn’t usually stay terribly slow, for more than about three or four weeks because it can’t, people have life needs, it only can hit a lull for so long.

We’re in about the fifth week. This is an interesting scenario. Right after Labor Day. The Labor Day lull lasted a little bit longer than normal. Then it got busy for maybe 10 days, and now it’s just been lackluster since then. There’s a lack of pendings, lack of listings, buyers don’t have a ton of motivation. Some do, and there’s still some multiple offers, but not as many. Now we’re finally hitting the stage where some listings that would’ve easily been selling or not selling.

Whereas three months ago, some listings that would’ve sold with 10 offers were selling with two or three offers. This is all part of the slowdown, all part of how things go down a couple of notches. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s just the way it goes. What I suspect that will happen is we will probably see it pick up after the midterms. We have the midterms happening next week on Tuesday. I think there’ll be a whole bunch of media craves, a whole bunch of complaining on both sides of the aisle, everybody throwing mud at one another.

I think the week after, I bet we’ll see it pick up for a few weeks. Will it be as busy as last year at this time? Absolutely. Positively not, folks pendings are off 30% to 40% from last year at this time. Keep in mind, last year was a peak year, and if every year was like last year there wouldn’t be a peak. That 10% on top, 11%, 12%, that was the peak. We have to come down from that, but I suspect that pendings right now are down 30%, 40% would probably be down maybe 20%, 30% as we go through November. I think it’ll ease up a bit.

I think we’ll see a few busy weeks before we go through the Thanksgiving slow down for a week or 10 days there, and then we might get a busy week or two in December. Then after the holidays, I do think you’ll see it pick up. It can’t possibly stay this slow forever. Forever, that’s a stupid statement, but it can’t possibly stay this slow on an ongoing basis. I doubt it will stay this slow until after the holidays. Usually, it doesn’t last, like I said, more than three weeks, maybe four. Now we’re on the fifth week. Historically that’s unusual.

Again, just to repeat, I expect it the week after midterms and the week after that, and before Thanksgiving, I think we’ll see a couple of busy weeks. If you have buyers that are looking to get into things before the end of the year, you should let them know that they should strike before we get to what I expect to be a busier couple of weeks. They should strike before motivations go back up. We see a little bump from the people that say, “I want to buy before the end of the year.” They really should do that.

With listings, if you can get on in the next few weeks, that’d be a good thing. We normally see in early October to mid-October lull this year was just dramatically worse. There’s no denying it. I don’t care what anybody says, they can [unintelligible 00:04:08] all they want. It is substantially slower. That’s what I expect to happen. I expect to see motivation and more buyers come out of the woodwork after the first of the year. I think that we will see sellers probably be delayed in listing. I’ll know, I’ll give you a better prediction in 60 to 90 days, but I think we’ll see sellers probably come out of the woodwork more after the first of the year, but really as we get into spring.

That’s all folks. Listen, keep doing the fundamentals. Keep at the basics. Make sure you’re still getting in touch with people. Make sure you’re working on your database. Make sure you’re checking in with people. This is the time of year that you can– not the time of year. No, no. Well, it is as far as getting in touch with your sphere. This is one of those situations where you can grab more market share, you can get in touch with more people. Build your sphere, build your relationship database. Folks, there’s going to be a lot of realtors getting out of the business. For the rest of you, this is your opportunity to grab onto people that others have grabbed onto and you can pull them into your sphere. Have a good day, guys. I’ll be talking more about this in the weeks to come. Take care.