"Thanksgiving & December ... A Real Estate Turning Point" - Ocean City, New Jersey
To put in more details ... there is the Ocean City Halloween Parade, a bit colder weather, Thanksgiving (and more water and heat is turned off in the single family properties around town), and more colder weather, and then the December holidays and First Night Celebrations in Ocean City with 2014 arriving, and then a 1/1/2014 Holiday Shopping Day.
Counting most of December, we have almost three full months when real estate activitiy tends to slow down quite a bit. Not only real estate activity, but also not much in the way of people coming on our barrier island at the time frame. It's the slow-down that last until late February or early March often determined on how good the weather gets.
It's also a time frame when many real estate agents take a winter vacation somewhere usually warmer than on our barrier island. Although we can get snow, it has been a few years since we had a lot of it. But we do get cold weather, wind, and rain. Now on the positive side ... winter is one of my special times here on the island. The library is the busiest places in town. The morning breakfast locations are always ready for another couple, and even in the evenings one can stay in OC or take a drive to Somers Point or Margate for a quiet dinner.
Now, if you are a real estate agents who also "Rents" as I am, the time frame after January tends to bring out the rental contacts. Many of the returning ones have made contacts from the time they finish their summer lease through the fall months before the new year. December tends to be the "break month," but January is the "swing back" month for rental activity.
By this time, we should have most of the "rental properties" into our system ... and we should be ready for the phone calls and emails from rental tenants wanting to return to the same property, a similiar one, or a larger or smaller one depending on the number coming back. "Open House" activity (which I normally do on Saturdays and Sundays in not in vogue since so few potential buyers are here on the island. But mostly we hang out in our agency locations answer phone calls, returning emails, and stay organied for the next change which arrives at the end of February or early March when the "Spring Buying Period" returns to the barrier island.
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