I got home this past Sunday at 3 a.m. from vacation in Costa Rica. WONDERFUL. Beautiful country, super nice people, amazing wildlife. I'll post a picture album once I can dig through all the work stuff. But I do not recommend the return trip schedule - leave house at 5 a.m., drive 2 hours to San Jose, fly from San Jose to Guatemala, fly from Guatemala to El Salvador, fly from El Salvador to Dulles, drive from Dulles to Richmond, collapse into exhausted sleep at 3:30 a.m., just over a full 24 hours later.
But enough whining - the trip was well worth that inconvenience. And I've come back to some good news:
- We got another confirmed, executed reservation for the Windsor Court condominiums. Whoopee!
- Housing sales rose sharply - 5.2%, I believe - higher in February 2009, far outstripping the economists' projected sales decline of 0.9%.
- I had a new listing come on the market, 2113 Floyd Avenue, and the Open House on Sunday (yes, the same Sunday I returned from the "planes, trains, and automobiles" journey back from Costa Rica) was JAMMED, we guesstimate 40-50 people came through, in approximately 25 groups. Even better than the raw numbers was this fact: NINE of the sign-ins and/or attendees either came WITH their buyer's agent or signed in indicating they had a specific buyer's agent.
For folks not in the business, what is the significance of those nine buyer's agent represented buyers? It means these are actually serous buyers, READY TO BUY, not "looky loos" or tire kickers. Put another way, more than 33% of the folks that came through the Open House are likely to buy, and likely to buy soon.
Based on what I was hearing on NPR yesterday, lots of economists and analysts are prepared to chalk up the sharp spike in February home sales as a one-time deal, a fluke, an aberration. One talking head said it was due to the weather - a colder than average December and January depressed sales, and a warmer than average February unlocked that pent-up December and January demand.
I'm going to be a bit more bullish. Based on Sunday's Open House, activity at my other listings, and anecdotal evidence from other Realtors, I'm cautiously optimistic that this increased sales activity, illustrated by the February 2009 national sales numbers, is going to be a continued trend, at least in certain areas of the City of Richmond and close-in Henrico. But we'll just have to keep watching the data, and keeping our fingers crossed.
I've got to get back into my blogging and I have a number of topics I want to cover, some of which have been on the list for a while:
- A photo album for my new listing, 2113 Floyd Avenue;
- "It's Not Personal, It's Business": Why I Like Working with Investors;
- Update on the Status of the Certain City Schools' Physical Plants - Binford, Chandler Middle, and Richmond Community;
- Affordable Housing Week; and
- The 2009 Downtown Loft Tour.
I've been toying with writing a posting on my "Top Picks" for best real estate deals out there in the Fan and Museum District, with some Northside and West End tidbits thrown in here and there. I'd want to keep the list on a running basis, adding as new stuff comes on. But I'd want to explain WHY I think certain properties are such good deals. I'm a bit gun-shy that any such list would somehow tick people off - which would not at all be the objective. But I've already experienced the effect of unintended consequences two or three times from this blog, so I'm treading carefully here.
So, I pose the question to the readers: What do you think about such a list? What are the potential down sides? What "rules" should govern? For example, I think it would be fair, and smart, to restrict myself from including my own listings on the list. Should there be other limits?
Any suggestions and ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. Have a great day! Or "pura vida!" as the Costa Ricans would say. [:)]
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