Awaiting the Spring Real Estate Buying Rush

Have not posted since not much is happening on the house selling front.  We had another potential buyer look at the house last Monday.  Our Realtor said that the person liked the house and they were shown other houses.  No other news from that :(.

Every one is telling us the same thing that the economy is picking up, interest rates are low, and so is our house price so buyers will be out in mass during the Spring.  We so far have not seen this.  We keep a close eye on the houses in our town that are for sale, when they were listed and which ones sold and when.  Right now there are 297 houses for sale in Hopatcong out of the 5,000 households (6%) with about half of that number being foreclosures and short sales.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that right now there are only 4 houses similar to ours within $35k of our price.  One is $34k lower and is a block away but is an advertised "fixer upper".  The other 3 are from $15 to $35k above our price.  From looking at these higher priced houses it looks to us that they are over priced which is good for us.

All of the stats tell us that we are priced right to sell.  However, since the beginning of the year there has only been 18 sales which is about 40% lower than last year at this time.  The sales have also been in the smaller sized houses.  It looks to us that there just is not enough buyers no matter the house price.  It's still very early in the buying season so we just wait and make the best of it.

With the good weather we have been working around the house.  Two weeks ago we had 6 yards of mulch delivered which, be the way, is around 5,000 lbs.  I shoveled it and dumped it while Patty spread it in the flower gardens around the house.  It took us 10 hours over 2 days to get it all in place.  I also re-seeded a bunch of bare spots in the yard with grass seed.  This week I will probably need to mow the yard.  I can hardly wait to mow as it will make the yard look even, grass the same height as the weeds :).  One of the good things about  Spring is that all of the houses in this area look better.  This area really is beautiful in all seasons except for the Winter season.

So here we are just waiting.............