This past week our listings saw an average of 2.8 showings each.   This is the second week in a row where showing traffic  has been significantly higher than previous weeks.   A few weeks ago when I first reported the increase in showings, we hadn’t seen a translation to offers yet.   I’m happy to say that  a lot can change in a week or two.   In the past 10 days we have received a number of offers on a few of our listings and a couple of those listings received multiple offers.

The real estate business is an interesting phenomenon.   It never seems to fail that the business is a feast or famine.   I haven’t been able to formulate any real theories on why this happens.   Perhaps that will be discussion for a future blog.

But the fact is that Charlotte seems to be experiencing one of those minor upticks or waves in the real estate market.   For the past few weeks, both traffic and offer activity has picked up after a very slow October and November.   To be clear, it is still the very aggressively priced homes that are actually selling.   But at least demand seems to be picking up at least in the short term.

It makes sense that there could be some pent up demand  after months of buyers sitting on the fence.   It could also be that the real estate patterns from out west are starting to drift our way as they often do.   Just this morning the National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales  have continued to make upward progress since bottoming out in June after the tax credit expired.   I checked pending home sales in Charlotte this morning and they appear to be holding steady, but not yet rising.   However, if offer activity really has picked up in the last few days, then we should see those pendings climb over the next few days/weeks.   I’m pleased to say I’ll be adding more than one pending to that list shortly.

So the question remains:   Are we experiencing a short term wave of activity or the beginnings of an overall increase in a very slow real estate market?   Stay tuned to find out.