Housing Law of Attraction
By Patrick Burgan
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – I’ve been doing this a long time, and even I have to say the housing market is crazy, even for me. Regardless of who you talk to, people will tell you that the biggest challenge we are facing is that “there is no inventory.” Au contraire, mon frère. Yes, we are just about measuring time on market in nanoseconds, but therein lies the true challenge rather than the perceived challenge. Hear me out…
Let’s talk stats. For the period of June 2019 to June 2020, the MLS reported 5,746 residential sales in the tri-county area, lasting, on average, 78 days on the market. From June 2020 to June 2021, there have been 6,324 residential sales. How could there be an inventory problem if sales are up 10% year over year? Homes must be listed to be sold, am I right or am I right? Here’s the difference. For that same period, the average days on market dropped from 78 to 57!
The real problem has nothing to do with an inventory shortage but has everything to do with the time that home is on the market.
Look, Mother Teresa was asked to attend an anti-war rally years ago. She knew well the power of the law of attraction. She replied. “I do not wish to attend any anti-war rally or meeting, but I will be happy to come along to a peace rally.”
And another one of my favorites, Henry Ford, once said: “Whether you think you can, or you can’t, you’re right.”
Wise words from wise people that forever changed our world as we know it. These philosophies sum up the issue we are seeing with the housing market. The more we attract with our perspective and thoughts, the more we create in our actual reality. To that extent, stop putting a perceived inventory problem out into the universe and rather focus your energy on the abundance of homes available for sale.
With record low rates continuing to entice people to throw their hat into the homeowner ring, the challenge is not that there aren’t many homes for people to toss it at right now. The challenge is that by the time they schedule a showing, the home is often already gone. Homes are there, but they aren’t lasting long.
If we continue to approach and look at this scenario with a mentality that we have an inventory problem, we are going to truly see we have an inventory problem. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t have an inventory problem. If sales are happening, that means that homes must be available, unless people are just simply buying NFT homes and not ACTUAL homes.
I’ve never seen anything like this. Homes are selling faster than people taking their masks off on June 2. But let’s set the record straight. There isn’t a supply and demand issue that is causing this. The challenge is that homes are not lasting long on the market.
Patrick Burgan is the 2021 President of the Youngstown Columbiana Association of REALTORS®
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
