Are we there yet?

It’s prime vacation time, so no doubt anyone with kids has heard the ominous cry “are we there yet?” “How much farther?” or ”How much longer?” This is what I’ve been asking for over a year now. Are we there yet? How much longer? When will we get there? Of course, I’m talking about the elusive bottom of the Real Estate market.

The real estate gurus say we will not know we are “there” until we start back up the charts. Well guess what we must be “there”! I never thought I would ever say it is exciting being at the bottom but I have to say I am ecstatic, happy, overjoyed! We are at the bottom! Hurray, we can only go up from here. (At least for now I am sticking to that)

Tom just ran the Market Update report for the first half of the year. We have seen a turn around in all areas in the real estate market, especially Lake Hartwell. It has had a huge spike in sales over last year. Sales have more than doubled from the first half of 2009. It went up almost 141% in number of houses sold! Wow, what an improvement. Don’t get over excited yet. In real terms it means that in the first half of 2009 we only had 29 sales compared to the first half of 2010 where we had 70 sales. Yes, this is a huge improvement but if you are one of the many that has a lake house on the market keep in mind there are 493 houses on the lake for sale right now.  That is 492 houses that you are competing with to get the attention of those few precious buyers. If another 70 buyers come into the market over the next 6 months that will still leave 432 houses on the lake to sell starting next year. Bottom line is that we still have a long way to go, but we are headed in the right direction!

For those of you who have been “timing” the market to buy, the proverbial bell just rang.  The swing just started back up. Don’t wait any longer if you want to be one of the ones that get to say “I got the best deal. I bought it when the market was down”. You won’t be able to sing that song much longer.

So, are we there yet? It certainly looks like we have hit the bottom of the charts for now and it’s uphill from here. Now, if we can just get the appraisers to understand this