As all reports are indicating, the housing market appears to be in full recovery, with all the metrics pointing clearly in the right direction. Pending sales are climbing, sales of existing homes are rising and on pace to surpass five million units by the end of the year. The new-home market has awakened as well—housing starts are higher than they’ve been in five years, and new-home sales are increasing more quickly than existing home sales. Prices are rising in virtually every market and every category of homes, and delinquency and foreclosure rates continue to fall.
In addition to being real estate’s busy season, June is an appropriate time for all real estate sales professionals to review their performance thus far and assess what they’ve accomplished relative to these market trends.
June is also a great time to re-evaluate how you’re approaching the opportunities at hand, making sure all of your bases are covered and that you’re not leaving business on the table. Here are a few things you may want to consider:
– With short sales running at twice the rate of REO sales, and the debt forgiveness act set to expire at the end of 2013, distressed borrowers mustn’t be overlooked as possible clients. Are you using all available resources to locate and contact underwater borrowers in order to offer help in executing a short sale as an alternative to foreclosure?
– Are you keeping tabs on pricing trends in your local market(s) to figure out which homes have moved from negative, or no equity, to positive positions? If so, have you conducted any outreach to homeowners within your area to see if they want to list their properties now, while we’re in a seller’s market? Have you gone through your prospect database to flag homeowners who might finally be interested in selling? Now would be a great time to check in with those people and to review your local MLS activity to identify homes that were listed over the past year only to be pulled off the market. In the current market, homes that previously were hard to sell are likely to be far more attractive to motivated buyers.
