They say its a long road to reconstruction. That sure has been true as it applies to the position of strength for a seller of real estate for the last 5 plus years. Buyers had all the cards and sellers were left playing Indian Poker. Long lists of options and not a lot of prospective buyers created a reality for sellers that discouraged many owners from listing the Sea Isle house for sale. They wanted to sell but did not believe that they could get a good price or even get any offer at all.

In January of 2012 the worm started to turn. We saw stronger sales volume than we had in previous years and the solid activity continued through the Fall. Inventory that had been listed and re-listed for years was finally cleared out and the prospective buyers began to lose the advantage position. As 2012 closed I was wondering if that solid year would be followed up by another strong selling season or if we would fizzle out as we had with some other false alarms in the past 5 years.

This is what has happened so far.

The 2013 prospects began showing up in solid volume as soon as the new year began and they were immediately confronted with lists of possible options that were painfully short. I was out with a customer last week and they only had 3 houses they could look at that fit their needs and in the past 7 days, all of them have sold. For the first time in a long time the market is not delivering more product that it can sell and the buyers are being forced into the difficult position that was the exclusive province of sellers since 2008. Only time will tell how this is going to go but it’s nice to have a more balanced condition. It’s healthier and in the long run, better for both sides of the aisle.

Steve Freda