It has been an interesting and productive year so far. Our markets are still facing significant inventory shortages, but have cooled a bit from last year's levels. Since regional economic and job growth have continued at a strong pace, there's no real reason to suspect that potential demand has diminished. We're guessing that 
rapidly rising prices in the lower and mid ranges have priced some buyers either out of the market or into its fringes, while others may have become discouraged by the multiple offer frenzy so common last year.
In spite of that cooling, we have had a good 2016 so far, with our business split about 60-40 between repeats and referrals from our existing client base, and new business from internet marketing, generated by regular market reporting linked to our IDX search website. We're on track to have a year that looks to be close to what we did in 2015, which was our best year since 2006. And most importantly, we're still having fun doing it.
Mary and I will finish out 2016 with our usual holiday and end of year housekeeping - Christmas cards, Sunset magazine subscriptions for our client base, and planning for the coming year. We'll take a hard look at our marketing efforts and make some decisions about new efforts, but there isn't much broken with what we're doing now, so changes will likely be minor. And hopefully, we'll finally get our databases synchronized - a long on-going task that has been complicated by our unique quirks and preferences and the fact that Mary gets to use a Mac, while I'm stuck in the PC world.
And as usual, we'll keep our eyes and ears open for impending changes to the industry and business environment. We always want to be out front of what's coming rather than playing catch up after the damage has been done.
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