Ever heard it said that the real estate market is always slow this time of the year?

It there any truth to it?

How do you determine if it is true?  What are the signs you look for?

Well, since we are not up to our ears in showing and listing property right now, we thought that we might like to examine whether or not our market (City of Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania County, Stafford County, King George County, and Caroline County) in Virginia is typical for the holiday season this year.  Truthfully, we never knew whether or not it was always slow in November and December.  We think we know the answer now though.

Since the actual sale of a property is the only basis upon which we can say it has been a good market, the best way to see if the market is slow during a given period of time is to determine what you will use as a measuring tool.  We thought that finding out the number of homes that went under contract (contract ratified and all contingencies removed) during a specified period might be a pretty good indicator.

Fortunately, our MLS system (MRIS or Metropolitan Regional Information System) permits us to compile data from many fields.  We went back to 2001 and looked for how many properties went under contract in a given month over the past six years.  Figures for December 2006 are not in yet but one might assume that the trend will continue.

Take a look at this chart to see how in pans out:

Am interested in knowing how it looks in other parts of North America.