Seventeen Year Buyers

Bugs creep me out a little.  I'm sorry. They just do. But that crazy infestation of seventeen year locusts seemed to coincide with some strange wave of home buying, so I had to find a slightly not-creepy picture of the little devils. I wouldn't want to wake up and see those eyes too close to me, just the same.

However...

As the locusts emerged from their holes where they'd been waiting for almost twenty years, mortgage rates started to creep up. And suddenly would-be buyers who've been waiting for years also began to flood our offices.

It got busy after February. It even started back in the Hurricane Sandy-aftermath.  But this is just insane.

The locusts lined the banks of the Hudson, buzzing so loudly I couldn't hear myself think as I crossed the Kingston Rhinecliff Bridge. My email and my phone started buzzing, too.  I figured things would get busy, but I really had no clue.

Every single day, I'm showing homes to at least two different clients. Seven days a week. Are they buying? They are.  They're determined to get a steal, and the days of the steal may be gone already. Sellers can hear those buyers coming, and they know what rising interest rates mean. Many of them have already dropped the price of their homes past the point of comfort, so buyers expecting to pay 20% less than asking price are getting a rude awakening...sellers are countering those offers with numbers that look a lot like asking price.

Great properties, rare properties, like an in-town Woodstock stone cottage, get snapped up within a couple of days, often after a heated bidding war. And days later, agents for buyers who missed their chance call, wondering if perhaps there's still a chance their buyer can get a bid in.

Remarkable properties, like this great retail space along Rt 28 just three miles west of Woodstock, have been for sale for awhile. But with all the summer traffic, the buzz about the new rail trails along the Ashokan Reservoir, and a great house for the owner or a tenant tucked back behind the trees on parklike grounds next door, this place is going to sell.

Now if I can just find a buyer for that adorable little 1780s cottage I like outside of Woodstock!