Snow and Real Estate Sales

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!

Snowing Again

It's snowing tonight in Guilford, and it seems to have been snowing quite a lot lately. When our kids were little, they used to get excited by snow, and hope for a day off from school. The phone would ring, and I would tell them that it was the sound of people cancelling their real estate appointments. No school, no showings. Although that was a decade ago, things haven't changed. When the weather is bad enough, no one looks at real estate.

We're lucky that we aren't in a business where a day like today means that those sales can never be made up at another time. If a plane takes off with empty seats, or a theater has no patrons, that's money down the drain. At least most people looking for property will look again on a nicer day. Generally, it's not an impulse purchase, or a date-specific one.

There are also the issues of showings and open houses. Unless everything is perfectly plowed, it can be tricky to have buyers coming in on icy sidewalks. It's often hard to park with snow piled on the sides of streets. And few places look their best with wintry boots and shoes tracking the outside slush onto rugs and floors.

I wonder if the Internet has changed all this for us. When you're home due to cancellations, as I am this evening, do you go online and shop for your dream home? Or a vacation place? Or the new location your business needs? We hope so!