Things have picked up...

Yesterday was the first time in quite a while that I didn't make a post to this blog and the reason is perhaps more evidence of things turning around in real estate, or at least picking up significantly. I was just too darn busy! Over the weekend I sold two houses. Actually I helped a seller negotiate an acceptable offer on one of my listings and I wrote an offer that was accepted, after a counter, on another. So it was both busy and very good for me. Now the real work begins. Realtors tend to work their hardest between the time of the acceptance of an offer and closing. thee are just a myriad of details to be attended to during that time and the Realtors involved are usually in the thick of things.

I also have noticed many other signs that things might be picking up for Spring already. My cohorts in the office are all saying that they have gotten very busy and our office had it's best January EVER last month. As I was updating the statistics that I track I noticed a significant jump in sales last week, as well as a jump up in Median Sold Prices. The inventory also jumped up, which means that people are getting their houses on the market for spring already. With the increase in sales we stayed level on the time to sell, even though the inventory went up. The percentage of foreclosed houses that sold in the area that I track also fell dramatically from 71% down to 50%, which means that regular (non-foreclosure) homes are selling strongly again.

So the signs of a local real estate recovery, or at least an up tick, are all around us right now. I've written a number of "light at the end of the tunnel" and "the sun'll come out tomorrow" posts here, mostly out of hope that things were getting better. Now there's real proof that they are indeed improving. This just doesn't feel like the old saying "even a blind squirrel will find a nut sometimes." This feel real and it feels good.

Got to go! It's another busy day in real estate.