They Say You Can Shoot A Cannon Down Main Street

Real Estate Sales in Leavenworth have slowed, new listings are coming on the market and people are looking at them, at least from the comfort of their own homes.  Sales are down but interest remains.  What is it that'll get the market going and allow people to continue to live the Leavenworth lifestyle?

There are two answers in my mind to the dilemma of creating sales.  1) the whole foreclosure mentality must go away.  A recent documentary film titled "Inside Job" states that in the past year or so there've been 6 million foreclosures- and there's only 9 million more to go! 2) Pricing must simply move in line with the market, which is somewhat focused on that "foreclosure opportunity" mindset.  It's not that people shopping for a Leavenworth home or recreation property necessarily fee they need to steal something.  Rather they just want to feel they didn't overpay and a few months or a year later come to realize they are now upsidedown in the value.  The challenge with real estate is that it's a dynamic "product": the value is never certain for a long period of time.

As a homeowner we tend to look at where the bar last was highest and that's where we want to be, whether we were thinking of selling then or now.  Seeing that the bar is now something in the neighborhood of 25% lower than past year to eighteen months is a bitter pill to swallow -  specifically if you bought from around the end of 2004-the end of "06".  That's where you're looking in a black, empty hole. 

considering the moving nature of real estate we know it goes up and occasionally back down and ultimately finds it's way up and in a healthy market ultimately higher than the previous melt-down.  So, if you've bought real estate pre "04", the reality is you can sell, you will be in the black, just not at the pretend, overinflated values of "06". 

So, when it comes time to sell remember that what happened in our economic tsunami was not reality so much and accept that some profit is what you were going to get anyway had we not allowed the economic firestorm to be allowed to run unattended thus creating the current mess.  I think once we all accept the reality of what and where our real estate values SHOULD be we'll all go back to buying and selling real estate, the homes and land that allow us to enjoy what we really want- a place from which to enjoy that Leavneworth Lifestyle.