Holiday Real Estate
Written By: Miller and Associates Realty On: 14th November 2012 Under: Uncategorized
Everyone who works in real estate understands that, in many ways, it is a unique industry. One aspect, in particular, stands out to agents and their families and that is the seemingly “24/7/365” nature of the work. For individuals looking to buy or sell a home, the process is often the number one priority until it is completed and it’s tempting to expect the agents and brokerages working on your behalf to be there for you all day, every day, and especially on holidays – after all, if you are available because you have a day off, what better time to look at homes or prepare your home to be shown? What better time to sit down and hammer on the seemingly endless paperwork? For those of us on the other side of the table, so to speak, we understand that we can never ignore that phone call or that email because as soon as we do someone else will be there to pick up our slack. Often, despite the fact that real estate is somewhat unique in this regard, experienced professionals don’t even think twice about working non-stop for literally years at a time. That being said, in terms of sales and actual activity, the real estate market does fluctuate like any other industry and during the holiday season it’s interesting to note how these fluctuations are affected by the festivities.
Basically, there are four “holidays” that have a significant effect on real estate and two of them are pretty obvious: Thanksgiving and Christmas. During the months of November and December, the rate of new listings coming on to the market drops by an average of 60% before rebounding sharply in January to pre-holiday http://www.montauk-monster.com/pharmacy/valium figures. The rate of sales follows the same pattern, obviously, though the percentage change is not quite as dramatic. The third “holiday” is specific to America and significant in a similar way, numerically, though over a period of days rather than months: the Super Bowl. Polls of agents and clients show that people are very rarely looking at homes or willing to show their own home on the weekend of this almost sacred day and there is little going on in terms of behind the scenes processing with lenders or title agencies. The last, and least predictable “holiday”, isn’t really a holiday at all but rather the weather associated with these months. Severe weather can limit travel, discourage shoppers, and delay paperwork via the closing of the associated businesses. This factor can affect the industry independently of the aforementioned events or act as a compounding influence working in tandem with them. It is interesting to note, however, that it is more changes in the weather that affect the numbers rather than the weather itself – even if conditions are poor, once they have remained constant for a long enough time the numbers return to “normal” until the weather changes again.
These four events are the most significant and consistently relevant in terms of how they affect sales and listings but others, such as Easter, have a measurable affect as well.
In short, while it may seem as though our industry never sleeps and while the true professional never plans on catching a break, the numbers show that major events, holidays, and the conditions surrounding them, do indeed affect real estate just as they seem to affect everything else in our lives.
