The Spring market has officially begun.  The stimulus package will take effect sometime in March; cyclically the highest demand is in the Spring.  As a result, demand may continue to increase through April or May, rather than reaching a plateau in March.  This is great news for the real estate market.  Demand should start to mirror year over year comparisons by the end of March.  Expect the active inventory to continue to grow throughout the Spring as more homeowners enter the game.  Unfortunately, inventory is already standing tall, above the 15,000 mark, so more homeowners coming on the market will only push the inventory towards the 20,000 mark, which could be reached during the Summer market.  With the inventory climbing along with demand, we can anticipate the expected market time to hover around the 10 month mark.  During the Summer market, June through the first half of August, we can expect demand to drop slightly and the inventory to continue its slow climb.  As a result, the expected market time will increase.  During the Autumn market, the end of August through Halloween, we can expect the inventory to drop as sellers begin to pull their homes off of the market if they were unable to sell their homes during the Spring or Summer markets.  Demand will drop slightly again as the expected market time remains relatively unchanged.  Cyclically the slowest time of the year for the real estate market, the Holiday season, Halloween through the first couple of weeks of the New Year, we can expect demand to fall to the lowest levels of the year as a larger number of sellers throw in the proverbial towel and pull their homes off of the market.   The expected market time would then increase slightly.