Snow is not good for real estate sales. I taught my children at a young age to moderate their excitement on school snow days, telling them that snow causes people to cancel their showing appointments. Buyers don't want to go out and drive around in bad weather, and sellers don't want to worry about shoveling and dirty boots tracking through their clean houses.
But real estate isn't an impulse purchase, right? It's hardly in the category of the candy by the checkout counter, or even the perfect dress in a shop window. Therefore, people who don't look and buy one day should do so the next, or the next week or month.
Well, they probably do. Unfortunately for us, we track sales year to year by the week and the month. When we look back, we don't always remember the weather at the same moment the year before. Perhaps, however, this year will be different. This weekend marks the first anniversary of the Blizzard of '13. That storm impacted sales for weeks, so much so that the whole month of February 2013 was horrendous for us. That loss followed us for the whole year, for good and for ill. We popped later in the spring, the spring market lasted well into the summer, and the summer lag started in late August.
So what will 2014 bring? So far, a lot of ice and snow!
