As the season changes (temps at night are in the high 20’s low 30’s) the focus starts to shift away from the lake and more attention gets placed on the ski area. This is the time of year when sellers (if they’re motivated) start counting the number of days left in the year. They know that once the holidays come, families tend to get distracted. The snow starts falling and people come up to the mountains to get away, go skiing, have snowball fights, and make snowmen. They don’t come up to necessarily look at real estate. So the next 2 or 3 weeks are critical. After that, the lakefront activity slows down.
So the question becomes….Do you drop the price and stand out as a motivated seller, or do you winterize the property and hope for the best next Spring? It’s crunch time for sellers. Decisions need to be made. There are 37 lakefront properties currently for sale. 21 closed sales and 2 pending short sales which means there’s still over a year’s supply of homes on the market right now.
Today I decided to take a look at homes for sale along the lake from a different perspective. I’m looking at Days on Market, and Price Changes (I say price changes instead of price reductions because in a couple cases the seller actually raised the price instead of lowering the price for one reason or another). Take a look.
Price Changes on Current Lakefront Listings
* This number is deceptive. If a property gets taken off the market for 30 days or more, the cumulative days on market starts over so this number might not be truly accurate, or the number of price changes might be different.
WHAT STICKS OUT TO ME
I hate to say this, but I see a lot of stubborn sellers (stubborn regarding price). Over half of the sellers currently on the market haven’t made a single price change. This to me shows lack of motivation. Not only are a lot of sellers not changing their price but most of the price changes aren’t that significant. I see a handful of properties that have moved significantly on their price…..but you can count them on one hand. North Shore, Aurora, Cove, Peninsula…That’s about it.
In the Sellers defense, I think it’s important to note that there are only so many buyers for the upper end price range in Big Bear. And if price is more important than time, they’ll hold out until they get their price but it might take a while to get it.
