Last August we sent out a note to our clients that we were seeing signs that the winds might be shifting. We were sensing a softening in the market, something we had not seen in the previous 2 years; 2014 being a blow-out year for sellers! We continued to pay attention post Labor Day and the trend continued through December. The real test would be to see where things were around the second week of January and the trend continued to be our friend, we liked that!
The two weeks previous to Easter were slow, I mean really slow! I took a two day holiday with my kids two weekends ago, thinking this is a good time to be away, its dead! That Sunday night my phone and email blew up-5 new client calls, more new client calls that week. Suddenly we are swamped, submit 5 offers and all of a sudden it's calls for 'highest and best' on all but 2 of them. We had not seen 'highest and best' in months! I spoke to a client on Friday who confirmed what we were experiencing (he just came back post Easter, Spring break and just won a highest and best yesterday). He was seeing the same uptick in the activity levels of homes he was following on Streeteasy.
We are not saying the bull is back however we are watching closely. My feeling is that things will continue to 'normalize' and the surge over the last two weeks was more about pent up, post holiday demand (and a handful of attractive properties coming on line) than a 2014 style sellers market. At least that is what we are hoping for!
Keith Burkhardt
The Burkhardt Group
917.770.4951
