What 2009 Has Meant, So Far, in Real Estate Here In Fairfield

Real Estate, Hopes and Dreams

Three out of four quarters done in the year and there are some numbers to consider.

YTD to September 30th, 343 single family homes have sold in Fairfield vs 434 in 2008.

The average listing price of these homes was $794,655 this year vs $857,172 in 2008

The average sale price of these homes YTD in 2009 has been $724,891 vs $804,688 in 2008.

The average market time ytd in 2009 is 99 days vs 101 days in 2008.

Is the market down? That would be a yes.

What does it mean, though? Here’s what I see.

Last year, at about this time, my wife and I had dinner with friends of the family that lived in Manhattan for many years before retiring. They had plenty of money and had done very well with their professions and investments and  didn’t have a worry in the world. As we ate dinner with them, they were surprisingly grim in their outlooks. Hide your money, they said. Bury it in the back yard and make sure you have six months supply of CASH! No lie. I listened to them and thought about the movie ‘Caddyshack.’ There was a part of the movie where Bill Murray went golfing with the Bishop. At the end of the game, the Bishop was completely demoralized. After the game, the Bishop was seen drinking at the Country Club bar. Bill said something to the Bishop, making a reference to God. ‘There is no God’ the Bishop replied.

We’ve come a long way from those days.  I’ve seen a few things that are, in my humble opinion, very important. First, no matter what happens, there will ALWAYS be people looking for a home to buy. There will always be people buying their first home, and there will always be people whose homes are getting small for them. There will always be people whose children have left home, leaving their parents to walk around their now empty homes, wondering how long before they want to move on to, as a friend of mine said, a new and happy stage of their lives. In short, buying and selling a home is about crossing a threshold of sorts that comes along with a lifestyle change. People will always be going through these lifestyle changes no matter what.

What’s happened, though, in my opinion, is that people have realized that their house is NOT their bank. It’s not the lottery ticket that they were counting on to get them rich. It’s their home, where, as Michael Corleone said, their wife sleeps. Where their children play.

So the good news is this, and I think it’s GREAT news. People have settled down. Wait. Let me say that again. People have SETTLED DOWN! The market, and I’m speaking for myself, too, has stopped hyperventilating! The hysteria is going away! Yippee!

How do I know? I’m getting phone calls from people that dissappeared last year that were looking for places to buy. Have they bought yet? No, but they’re out there, and that counts. Homes are selling. A home in the Sasco area priced below $1,000,000 was bindered in less than a week. Was it a perfect home with all the bells and whistles? No, but it sure was nice. Was it priced correctly? Absolutely.

I was walking my dog this morning and a neighbor friend asked me how things were going in Real Estate.  I told him it was like when my wife is really ticked off at me, after I’ve done something wrong, dumb or careless, which is on a regular basis.  Well, I said, I don’t know about you, but I do my best to get on my wife’s good side. I take out the garbage when she asks me to, I pick up after myself. I try to be thoughtful for a change . In the middle of it, I get a smile from her. Maybe she laughs at one of my dumb jokes. I turn from her and give mself a big thumbs up, only to turn around and realize I’m still, in no uncertain terms, still in the doghouse. That, I said, is where we are in this market. The market is winking, but we still have a ways to go.

And, sooner or later, we all get out of the doghouse.

Back to my top ten list tomorrow…