When the small pond dries up…

In every pond large or small there are the big fish. In small town America these are likely to be the home town hero who never left town or who came back to town when he blew out his knee and his athletic career was over. They are the glad-handing, back-slapping loud talking, good ole boys who always seem to be on top of the world.

But what happens to the big fish when the small pond dries up? They may be the last to end up flopping away in the mud, but eventually they end up there – stranded by the evaporation and a lack of anywhere else to go. That has certainly happened all over America to the small town movers and shakers who were the builders and shop-keepers and landlords of the village or town.

In my little patch the 5-6 local builders have pretty much all stalled out on the developments that they had going and now most are scrambling to get enough remodeling work to stay afloat. If there’s any bright spot to be found, it’s that the larger, out of state companies that were stealing way customers have faired even worse and most have exited the state, many going bankrupt in the process.

Even the big, super-team Realtors in the area have shrunk to the point of being almost normal competition. Many of them missed the foreclosure boat and didn’t land the prestigious (used with tongue firmly in cheek) REO management accounts that now make up the super teams. If you’re not an REO properties listing agent these days, you’re not doing much business. You have to wonder what they’ll do when the REO pond dries up – and it will.

In my little patch, being the biggest agent in my little village would mean being broke, since not much is selling there. A combination of relatively high taxes and sellers who refuse to get real about home values has relegated my home market to a secondary market status. Markets on all sides of me are doing OK and that’s where I’m focused right now, but for now it makes little sense to focus much effort on my home market. It is a small pond that has dried up.

I’m sure that it will come back, but not until things get better overall and until more buyers willing to pay the premium to live here are out in the market. I have mixed feeling about that, since I’d prefer to be doing more business locally; but, at the same time, the local stubbornness has kept home values up better than in surrounding communities. We have homes 28 on the market in the $400-500K range for which the average Days on Market is now at 2 years – how stubborn is that?

So, for now, I’m off to try to be a good little fish in many other ponds. I’ll keep in touch with my local market, but I can’t depend upon it to make a living and that’s the first order of business. And I’ll keep an eye out for the coming rains that will refill the pond. Is that a rainbow on the horizon?