Belmont (MA) Sales (or no sales) review YTD 2011

Yeah, we got one more day to go, and I'll be waiting with baited (or holding until I turn blue) breath to see the numbers from the last 6 hours of February 2011 Deed recordings, but as of now, the numbers are in and they are, uhhh, well little numbers:

In Belmont, 4 homes were sold in the first 2 months of 2011. The good news here is that you can cut off your thumb and still use your left hand for the arithmetic (not good news). Days on market? It took agents 107 days to get the job done (about a week longer than it took them to do it in 2010 [101]).

The four homes sold went for an average of (let's see, add the pinky to the ring finger, the pointer and the no-no middle digit, divide by the life line and you get...) $724,000. That is a drop of 50 Grand from the sales in the same period as last year (where, by the way, 11 homes had the locks changed).

So let us see: it took longer to sell...they did not sell as many...they dumped 'em for a 6.5% drop below 2010's sales.

A lot of agents are talking about the snow: is it true or is it snow job aimed at blinding all of us to the real storm on the horizon? I went back 15 years and looked at sales for the same period. We've had some pretty nice winters in the last 15 years -- we've had some pretty crappy ones too. In the same two month period, 2009 comes in at 9 sales. Other than that, going back to 1996, sales for the 2 month period have been between a low of ten (in 2001), and a high of 24 (1999). Three times, sales hit 17; four times they came in at 14; twice at 16; twice at 18. FOUR SALES IN THE PERIOD IS DISMAL, plain and simple.

It's the weather we are being told. No one wants to buy; no one wants to sell; there's ice on the roads. Never mind that folks are more petrified for their livelihoods -- that the slippery roads are no match for New Englanders, but the slippery economic road we all may be taking may well be a journey too daunting. Never mind... we have our cheerful eternal optimist agent telling us all is well.

" 's no tellin' (get it? snow...'s no) telling what will happen next, but one thing is for certain -- we all need to get out the shovels. One way or the other we will be shovelling -- either snow or optimistic B.S., who's to say?