It Continues To Change

If you had asked me a few short weeks ago, I would have told you that the market here was stuck in the winter/holiday doldrums. The phones weren't ringing. The silence was deafening. Then all of a sudden, as if buyers and sellers were responding to a cosmic voice, the market on Long Island awoke with a vengeance.

Since the days of instant gratification for sellers are relegated to a distancing memory, they are once again listing their homes with brokers, hoping to realize the incredibly inflated prices of a short time ago. Unfortunately for them, it's not happening. Though we try to explain that markets change and we have to adapt to the rhythms created by external factors, it is a hard lesson to learn. Even those of us in the market long enough to have ridden the waves and survived, tend to have selective memory when confronted with the beginning stages of a downturn.

In some towns, the numbers of available homes has quadrupled in the past year and a half. The old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it," certainly applies here. How many of us lamented the lack of inventory for our buyers. Well, we certainly have that now. The buyers on the other hand, can finally take a deep breath and leave their cash at home when looking at a property for the first time. They have choices, putting them a little bit closer to the driver's seat. The problem is that seller's, stuck in the "but my house is worth. . ." syndrome too often walk away from a really good offer, only wishing for it weeks later. There is a frustration level on everybody's part, perhaps teaching us all there is no perfect market.

Fortunately for me, I can always count on my mother's comforting reminder that "this too shall pass."

Author: Geri Sonkin
www.LongIslandsBestHomes.com