What Do You Do When The Market Is Slow, And When Is It Going To Pick Up?

I have many people talking about how I must have a lot of free time these days with the market being slow. For me this just does not seem to be the case.

Lately I have been spending a great amount of time answering questions and meeting with people to discuss what I am seeing on the front lines our local real estate market.

What I have been telling people is the in my world I really see consumer confidence as being the largest factor to the current slow-down. I am working with buyers and sellers, I did help 5 properties change hands in August but have struck out for Sept.

Where I see the greatest difficulty in our current market is in trying to negotiate price. Buyers and sellers are so far apart that it can take a great amount of time and effort to reach an agreement. One set of buyers I am working with now have been negotiating on a property for over 3 weeks, This is unusual.

The components to the Victoria Real Estate market are so many and so varied that even after working directly with many different buyers and seller over the past three months I can still see no clear picture as to where we are headed.

So far, I have not seen any considerable drops in values of homes that I have been working on. However, I have seen homes priced well over values from last year which have needed dramatic price reductions in order to sell, mind you these huge price reductions have only brought the sale prices back down to where they were at the beginning of this year.

There are a few areas of the market that have seen drops in value, and areas that have been affected by the HST but in large the average home that is desirable for one reason or another is selling at prices seen at the beginning of this year.

One important trend I would like to point out is that in my recent activities I have seen a large reduction in both first time buyers with High-Ratio Mortgages, and out of town buyers.

At the moment, the few people who I see buying real estate through me or the other Agents in my office are predominantly locals who are moving from one place to another.