One of my friends added me to her Facebook friends and I confirmed the "friending," then got into the list of people whom I might know. After about 15 minutes of requesting and seeing faces I hadn't seen in years, I had to back out. There was the woman who had lived down the street from me in Syracuse when we were in about 5th grade at Sumner School, the Nottingham grads I hadn't thought of in years, the kids (now with families of their own) of relatives of friends, the clients who moved or decided not to move...Other Realtors, too. If I missed anyone, I apologize! The blog called, as did my day, and I had to stop. I am not one to check Facebook on a regular basis, so please forgive me if I don't respond rapidly. My e-mail or cell is always the better way to reach me. But it is a pleasure to see old and new friends!
Currently there are 141 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service. Of these, 40 are in the Village and 31 are considered waterfront. No new single family homes came on the market this past week, but three were re-listed. The same number of contingent (6) and "under contract, do not show" (4) homes remain with no changes. There are only 8 pending properties, and that usually signals closings.
There were two - a waterfront (actually lake rights) home in the village that came down in price but was sold rather rapidly, at least for this market. A smaller home - priced under $100,000 - also closed, again, fairly quickly. These two bring us to 57 closed for the year-to-date.
I wondered about the number of listings because it seems as if we have hovered around the 150 mark for quite a while so I went back to check. This blog began in the spring of 2007 but the updates didn't start until the following year after I attended the RE/MAX convention and heard more about how blogs were being used. So I went back to November of 2008 - right around President Obama's election, as I saw when I read some of that month's blogs.
That month (the 5th actually) there were 129 active listings and I hadn't broken them out to village or waterfront at the time. Nineteen were in the contingent or pending categories (we didn't have "under contract, do not show" then.) I wrote about closings occurring within 60 days of contracts back then, so the assumption was that these would close before the end of the year. There were only 45 closed at that time, so I was looking forward to about 64. In actuality, there were 66. I also wrote that we seemed to be at our low point, and that we were now coming out of it. Which we did, to an extent.
What intrigued me was a comment I made about the number of lots on the market, "thanks in part to Butters Farm." At that time, there were 87 active listings. Today there are 52 active lots in the Skaneateles area. Interesting - I think we can make the assumption (always troubling) that there has been a great deal of new construction in the area in the past three years. But I think we also need to recognize that many people are simply waiting - until the economy does turn around, closings don't take 90 days, homes sell within three months of listing on a regular basis, and the number of active listings comes down. It will happen. The pendulum will swing back. I have no doubts!
