This may not come as a surprise to anyone but the Winter real estate market is normally a “slow” time.  It doesn’t really matter if you’re living here in the MD Suburbs of DC or Southern California.  Once it gets to be late October, people stop looking for a home to buy and lots of people don’t bother putting their home on the market for sale.

Hmmm.  I wonder why?

Let’s see, there’s Thanksgiving.  That’s about 5 days of eating and visiting and shopping. Then we have the run up to the December Holidays. It doesn’t seem to matter what religious affiliation you have (or don’t) there is always something going on in December.  Office parties, neighbors’ open houses (of the eating and visiting kind – not the “my house is for sale kind”), shopping for gifts, visiting with family and friends and eating, eating, eating.

People decorate their homes (or not), they have stuff all over the place.  Hey, let’s just say it:  a lot of people just aren’t in the mood to shop for a house when it’s cold (in the MD Suburbs of DC), dark and either snowy or rainy.

Will The Tax Credit Change Ingrained Social Norms?

Here’s the short answer: No.

Sure.  There will be homes on the market available for sale. There are always homes on the market available for sale. 24/7/365.  This year these homes are not only the hard core, “I need to sell my house soon” types but all the short sales and foreclosed homes.  There will also be the hard core home buyers.  Those are the people who are looking for “the deal of the century” or they’ve been transferred her for a job or they have some other pressing need to get into a house sooner rather than later.

However, the tax credit is not going to spur a huge influx of home buyers.  The additional $6,500 for people who currently own homes and the $8,000 for first-time home buyers isn’t going to be stimulus enough to get people to ignore the Holidays and go house shopping.

Human Nature Works Toward a Deadline

The other part of this is that human beings tend to work toward a deadline.  In this case, the deadline isn’t until April 30th.  That’s when you need to be under contract.  My guess is that people will get busy sometime in March to look for a house, line up a mortgage and do what they need to do by April 30th.  No amount of “Now’s the time to buy” is going to make any difference.

It sure would be nice if someone out there called me up and told me “I want to buy a home by the end of the year.”  Hey, this is how I make my living and I want to be able to help people buy or sell their home.  I just don’t think the tax credit is thing that’s going to do it.

Of course, the tax credit is going to be really nice icing on the cake!  After all, who wouldn’t want an extra “free” $8,000 (for first time home buyers) or $6,500 (for existing home owners).  This additional stimulus may be enough to jolt the market a tiny bit. I’m thinking more people will wait.

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