While I’m probably the most techie REALTOR in my office, I still like something that is decidedly low-tech, our office’s Listings & Sales Boards. These white boards, which “back in the day” were chalk boards, give a one-line description of each of our new listings and sales for the month, including the name of the agent listing or selling the property. This serves several purposes:
- Networks new listings in the office to the offfice’s agents… a couple years back I saw a new listing on the board from one of my coworkers, ran my buyer over to it, and signed an offer the next day.
- Gives agents selling houses a little bit of an ego stroking, which helps them stay motivated and positive. It’s an easy way to give agents selling houses praise without saying a word.
- Gives agents that are not selling homes encouragement to work harder because they see who is selling and they want to see their name up there too. Activity begets activity.
- And my favorite, it helps us see what is happening in our office and our market. This is real-time information that helps us gauge the activity in the marketplace in both volume but also segments. This year has been marked by a much larger number of lower-priced houses selling. This isn’t $5,000 – $10,000 price reductions but rather more houses for 1st time buyers and at prices we hadn’t seen in YEARS. I personally have sold two homes (one a house, one a condo) under $70,000 this year… I hadn’t sold 2 at that price in the 5 years prior!
Our Listings and Sales Boards as of July 21, 2008:
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While the writing is too small to read, the important thing to see here is the ratio between the two boards and the number on each. We’ve seen about 1/4 of a board of new listings when normally we’d expect to see at least 1/2 of a board of new listings by this time in the month. On the sales side, we’re already on to the 2nd board of the month, which we’ve only been able to reach 2-3 times this year, and we still have 1/3 of the month to go!
What this reinforces to me is that we’re seeing a strong shift in the market dynamics. Buyers are buying in numbers almost identical to last year while new listings have fallen off much more. This is exciting to me as it signals that we are closing in on fundamental market levels of supply and demand. Of course this in no way signals that the Minneapolis/St. Paul housing market is at a price bottom or is going to quickly turn around but a turnaround cannot happen until certain things happen first, including the decrease of seller activity and a rebound of buyer activity, both of which now appear to be occurring.
