It’s been very busy time in the Boulder real estate market (unfortunately not much time to update my blog)! Remember when a buyer 
needed to see a house the same day it came on the market? Well, we are back in that mode. Over the weekend I was working with two clients and both were interested in a property they viewed. Immediately after showing the properties and learning of my clients interest I called the listing agent to learn what I could about the situation. In both cases there was already an offer on the table and my clients had just a few hours in which to submit an offer in order to be considered equally with the first one. Talk about pressure.
The cycle for buyers is needlessly to say very fast. The cycle has also quickened for sellers. In the recent past, a seller would put their home on the market, wait a few weeks and see if anyone would come. Hopefully an offer would be made in a reasonable time like a month or two. Now if you don’t have multiple showings on the first few days (one recent listing of mine had 9 on the first day) you know that you either missed the price or that there isn’t much of a market for your home. If it isn’t sold within a few weeks your old news, hoping new buyers come to the market.
The graph below shows the last three years of market activity on a weekly basis. Specifically, it shows the number of homes that went under contract during each week. The green line is 2012 and shows a big breakthrough in activity. The red line is 2010 and shows the big spike in activity caused by the tax credit. We have now broken through that invisible barrier. How long will it last? I expect it to start slowing in June but the market conditions have definitely shifted.
