Sunday, September 06, 2009

Look Forward to Fall

St Louis Condos
The field of real estate, like any other, is fraught with pre-concieved notions. I love watching HGTV, but one thing that television has a tendency to do is distort reality, even in (especially in) reality TV.

One notion I had early on in my career was that real estate sales are seasonal. That season, in my mind, would last from about April through August. Surviving from September through March would depend upon how busy we were during the so called "selling season". This myth, one that is widely shared, was the first to go.

The last few weeks seems to have picked up downtown. Some attribute it to the Culinaria opening, any number of positive factors can be added. Lots of pieces to the big puzzle are coming together in Downtown St Louis.

Reality though, is that real estate sales don't just happen in the summer. While sales are still lagging, they seem to have picked up from July and August, which are nearly as slow as January-February. In the past two weeks, clients have called with a greater concern about whether we should just "close up shop" and take their listing off the market for now. While that may be the right move for some, it isn't a rule. The interesting thing about the market is that activity in the range of $250,000 to $500,000 has nearly always been relatively slow during the summer months and picks up during the fall and winter months.

The bottom line, its still a great time to buy rather than sell. It's impossible to predict the future, but as the plans in motion to revitalize downtown continue to move forward, so will the presently fragile real estate market.

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