I have a short list of old reliable favorites, that I enjoy showing and I consider pretty good values. A lot of those have been on the market for a while, most due to the slow and tentative market rather than any glaring drawback to the house. Some of these houses seem like old friends, enjoyable companions who are available for a short notice date.
So imagine my surprise over the past couple of weeks when I've called the listing agents for some of these old reliables to schedule showings to find out that they have deals on them. It hasn't just happened once or twice. In the past two weeks it's happened at least a half dozen times. It's kind of a shock, actually. Like calling someone you have casually dated on occasion, only to find out they're now engaged.
The inventory right now isn't recharging, so there are fewer and fewer 'favorites' to show. Inventory has a seasonal cycle, with it peaking in July and then dropping until it starts picking up again the following spring. The fall selling season, which is typically the busiest selling period in Sullivan County, is drawing down. It's usually pretty quiet from mid November until mid January. But we generally see a pickup in mid January for a couple of months, with second home buyers looking to lock in a place for the summer. My fear is that this winter we're not going to have a lot of good inventory to show. Inventory is likely to drop further, because quite a few sellers take their houses off the market for the winter because they don't want to keep them heated or plowed out. And not a lot of sellers think about putting their houses on the market during the winter.
Good lake related inventory is about as low as I can remember in a few years, and only a handful of lakefront houses at moderate price points that don't have a significant drawback. Houses with lake rights that are priced right ae also tough to find. The 'little black dress' house — a 3BR vacation chalet style or log home on 5 or so acres with privacy, priced in the low $200's — is almost non-existent. Buyers looking for "farmettes", places with enough open fields or meadows for a large garden and a horse or two, face a very limited selection as well.
The shortage of good, well priced inventory in many categories often comes as a surprise to many buyers. Most new buyers, when they first get in touch with me, usually expect that I'll have a huge list of possibilities to send them. But in many cases I only have a handful of choices to pass along. With all the hype about it being a "buyer's market", it's natural to think that there are hordes of desperate sellers looking to unload their houses. But while there are hundreds of 'less appealing' (a more polite term than 'pretty crappy') houses desperately looking for a new owner here, there aren't all that many appealing ones. That doesn't mean, though, that all the good ones are gone. Here's a link to 10 faves with appealing features that I consider pretty good values, along with a 2 bedroom Catskill Farms new build spec house that's really sweet. (Yes, folks, I show and sell Catskill Farms houses, too.)
