Following Around The Sign Guy

There has been a big uptick in inventory over the past month in the Santa Barbara market. Over the past 16 years in this business I have noticed some super scientific ways to know the market has changed and here they are:

Realtors try to entice other Realtors to visit their properties on broker’s caravan by catering fancy lunches. Sure this happens when inventory is lower, but the uptick in fully catered lunches, coffee selections, raffles for wine and gift certificates and probably soon the ol’ answer a trivia question and get a lottery ticket enticement will be back too! Whatever it takes to get agents to preview a property and then tell their clients about it!

You follow around “the sign guy”, who has been at this job of installing and removing “For Sale” signs for 24 years. Before he had this job, agents would install their own and they were not mounted on posts, but smaller, hammered in yard signs. Once the big wooden posts were out front of houses, every seller wanted one of these and BOOM, a new business was born. I spoke to him this week and he relayed that he has hit a new peak of installing 18 signs per day several days in a row. He has made 140 sign posts in the last 1.5 months. There is a varied mix in the agents requesting the installs too, which says to me that more agents are in the business again and that this is a sure sign that inventory is high.

So what does this mean?

As a Seller, more inventory means more available properties for buyers to compare to your house.

What can you do to make your house stand out? Perhaps giving your house a fresh coat of paint would freshen up the color scheme. Professional staging is a great way to alter the tone of the house and appeal to the widest array of buyers.

Pricing is also key and making sure to educate yourself about the competition by attending open houses or asking your agent to provide you with a list of properties that are being shown to the same buyers looking at yours.

See the stats below from this past May and give me a call to learn more about your specific neighborhood and what the median price is there and inventory levels!

After 16 years of helping my clients buy and sell real estate here in Santa Barbara, I have experienced a lot of different markets and indicators of activity.

Let’s discuss if it is a good time to list your property