I was on the phone with a good friend of mine who is an agent with my office. As usual, we got to chatting about what the market is like right now.

I said that it seems like we are back to a more normal market where the best of the best listing are still going fast and sometimes for over the list price, while everything else is just sitting on the market waiting for a buyer to even notice it is for sale.

I then when on to postulate that this was due to the COVID market. Back then, the new listings of the day were the pending sales of the next day. Instead of Days on the Market, it was more like Hours on the Market. Every house seemed to sell immediately so there was no need to keep mental track of what was on the market. I think that got buyers and their agents in the habit of only looking at new listings and those with fresh price reductions. If a buyer or their agent wasn’t impressed with the house when it was a new listing or had just gotten a price reduction, it is like it disappeared. It was forgotten forever. It has always been hard to get people to revisit a stale listing, but it got even harder after COVID.

I think I went on and on for a little while longer. Then my good friend said he had heard somebody say this about the current market: “The first 10 days a house is on the market, it is a Seller’s Market. After that it is a Buyer’s Market.”

I told him I thought this was an incredibly simple way of explaining where and why the market is where it is right now. Then I went on to tell him that with me being so wordy, I would probably take 500 words to explain that to somebody……..which I apparently did in only the first 225 words of this post!