Its that time of year for sure now.  Parents, including ourselves, are hauling their kids and in some cases grandkids to school and thinking about College Football season starting up in a about 10 days.  Right now this leaves less time to think about buying a Lake Keowee Waterfront property.  Hopefully, for you buyers, the thought of getting a great deal on a Lake Keowee waterfront property is still bubbling near the surface.  As we have stated several times this year, there are some great deals out there.  The other part to that statement is that they won’t be there forever.  If you are going to take advantage of the bottom of the market, between now and next spring is the time to do it. 

If you were lucky enough to read your paper or watch CNN, FOX, etc., etc. you saw that existing home sales dropped 27% nationally in the month of July.  Was this a surprise to anyone?  Let’s see, you give people several months of an $8000 off sale, and then go back to full price and people stop buying.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a Realtor, to figure out what’s going to happen.  The thing about our market is the tax credit was not a big factor in the purchase of a Lake Keowee home or lot.  Don’t get us wrong; we would prefer that it would have led to more sales.  It was never designed to help out Lake Keowee real estate sales, and in the end it is leading to negative press that will probably affect us negatively.    You may say, “But what about the great rates, wouldn’t a buyer save more money with a better rate than they would with that tax credit?”  Yes they would, but crazy thing is us Americans appear to, for the most part, like instant gratification.  If we have to wait 15 to 30 years for gratification vs. today we will take today and consider the rest–also known as sit on the fence.  That’s doubly true when you consider that on average we stay in a house for 7 years.

For us nothing has changed since last week.  Prices are great, rates are great, sellers are working hard to make deals happen, buyers continue to plumb the waters and we continue to bounce along the bottom of a market that, all though better that last year, wont’ see clear growth until next spring.

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