A glimmer of hope in dark times…

As I view the daily news and track the local market, I keep watching (maybe hoping is the more apropos term here) for that glimmer of light at the end of this seemingly endless dark tunnel that we are experiencing in the housing market right now.

I recall taking a trip inside a cave once with my Indian Guides group, back when my son was young. The cave was one of those that has a stream in it (perhaps a river, but I don’t recall), so we were loaded onto electric motor powered skiffs and taken deep inside the cave on the water. Once there the guide went through an exercise that I shall never forget. He turned off all of the lights that had been used to guide us to that point and let us sit there for a moment. You have never experienced total darkness (see the picture of us on the left) if you have not done something like that. Then to illustrate how far our eyes will adapt to try to provide us some sight, the guide lit a single match in the darkness. We could see everything around us. That single little light was also enough to dispel the panic that had started to set in.

So now I look for that glimmer of hope in the desperate situation that we all find ourselves in these days. Perhaps it is the new Obama administration housing stabilization programs that will provide that little light in all of the current darkness. Perhaps it will be some other spark that takes hold in the market. Certainly something is needed to get us out of the darkness.

All it will take is some small light that allows buyers who have been waiting and trying to see through the gloom to finally feel that now is the time to act. Those few acts of faith in the future will start the ball rolling and it will not take long to gather both momentum and size. There is a huge pent-up demand for housing out there somewhere that needs to be released and then satisfied. Too many people have been waiting too long, trying to see when it would be safe to go buy a house again.

So, without even a visit from Little Mary Sunshine, I am hopeful that we shall see that glimmer of hope soon - a ray of light, even if off in the distance - and that it will grow into a bright glow of renewed faith and confidence in the future by all of those people who have been waiting and watching and hoping and praying for a better day. We’ve been through a tough winter in Michigan, both literally and figuratively and now it’s time for spring and the renewal that comes with every spring. It’s time for that one little hardy plant to push through the snow and proclaim new hope and new life. I’m ready. Let there be light!

Is that light at the end of the tunnel?

There’s no doubt that we’ve been in a long, dark tunnel in real estate in Michigan for the past year or two. That fact has been well documented in the papers and on the newscasts and even here in earlier posts. What is not yet being widely reported is that there are glimmers emerging from the darkness lately that may well presage the light at the end of this tunnel. I started seeing them and reporting on them back on August 13 (see my post about Looking for Rainbows). Just from a personal perspective I’ve picked up more buyers lately – more people who are out doing serious shopping for houses. I’ve also seen an up-tick in the flyer traffic at my listings – people taking flyers from the boxes at the houses. Even the showings have increased a bit and more of the current lookers are actually making an offer on something.

Now, I’ve seen an article or two in the newspapers or the weekly news magazines, written by economists or industry gurus that are starting to say positive things and note changes in the trends that portend a turnaround. I, for one, have certainly had my fill of the darkness and would welcome a more normal, more balanced market. I’m still showing a lot of foreclosed houses to people, but at least there are buyers out there going after these great deals. If they can’t find a foreclosure, many find a normal home for sale at a great price and go ahead with their plans with those houses.

We still have a rough patch to get through, with the current ARM resets about to cause another round of foreclosures; however, we may be getting more like Wall Street, were they regularly report things like, “the Street had already factored the end of the world into the market, so the was no panic at the release of that news today.” Maybe the real estate market has already factored in the next wave of foreclosures, so that will not cause more than a minor blip. I certainly hope so.

I don’t expect to emerge from this tunnel into a world that looks like the world was when we entered on the other side. As I said in my post “Nostradamus I’m Not” of September 17th, the new normal for Michigan is not anything like the old normal when we entered this tunnel. That’s not necessarily bad, just different. It’s something that will take some getting used to and which will require a whole lot of adjusting of expectations. I’m busy trying to adjust my business to this new reality – showing lots of smaller, less expensive homes, focusing on foreclosures, and trying to help sellers do the necessary things to market their homes in this new reality.