Today was the Broker's Tour for most of Oakland. There is still not alot of new listings coming onto the market, but I think in the next 2 months there will be an onslaught of new home listings.
With the market being what it is, listing agents are being careful to bring homes onto the market with as much advantage as they can give them. This means that most listings will be staged and painted, and many of the repairs will be done and all the reports will be available.
Timing a sale to get maximum effect is part of the stratagy, and a March introduction of a new property when more buyers are traditionally out looking is part of that.
Most observers, me included, think that the market has corrected for the most part, and that now we are in a leveling off period. Part of this is because towards the end of 2006, buyers started to become active again. They saw that home prices had dropped, and interest rates were about as low as they were going to get. This put a little squeeze on the market that leveled home values out at the end of the year.
This does not mean a return to the over-heated market we have known in the Bey Area. It means just another factor that is returning us to a more sane, and even market.
I still see 2007 as a great year for those looking to buy Real Estate.
