First of all, I should point out that there are LOTS of homes on the market right now, so this blog post is not intended to broadly encourage anyone and everyone to put their house on the market.  However....I have been asked several times in the past two weeks about whether it's really too late at this point to try to sell a house this fall.  It seems that this assumption is based on:

• The common knowledge that more homes sell in the summer than in the winter.
• The big drop in home sales (nationally) that makes many people assume the rest of this year will be quite slow as it comes to buyers committing to properties.

On the first point, let's compare the summer to the winter:

• May 2009 - Aug 2009 shows 333 home sales
  
• Nov 2009 - Feb 2010 shows 251 home sales

Surprised?  Looking at the data, there is a lot less variation between the summer and winter than I had assumed.  Sure, winter homes sales are 25% lower than summer home sales, but I expected it to be much more of a difference.

On the second point, I haven't given up on 2010 yet.  If the rest of the year is going to be quite slow, we should see it in the number of contracts being ratified.  Here are the past four Augusts....

• August 2007 = 77 homes under contract
• August 2008 = 66 homes under contract
• August 2009 = 85 homes under contract
• August 2010 = 61 homes under contract

So, I guess here, it depends on the headline writer.  While it would be fair to say "Buyer commitments in August lowest in four years" -- I would have expected August contract numbers to be lower if we were indeed driving off a cliff for the rest of 2010.

My full market report will be coming out in about a week after additional data is available.  Stay tuned!