Holiday Sales

The 5 1/2 weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's used to be a time for agents, brokers and others in the real estate industry - at least the ones who have had a good year - to pack their bags and head to the Caribbean.
The thing is, this hasn't been a very good year.
Conventional wisdom has dictated that sellers don't want their holidays interrupted by open houses and buyers, aware that inventory typically shrinks toward the end of the year, use the winter months to take a break.
"The reality is that if you've been on the market since September and marketed the property through the entire fall, it needs a rest," Droubi said. "If you don't take it off and just market right through the holidays, it gets pretty tired. If you actually pull it off and put it back on again in January or February, there's a new surge of momentum."
The strategy is backed by statistics: January is typically the slowest month of the year for home closings, reflecting the lull in activity in November and December. Just 6,434 home sales closed in the Bay Area's nine counties in January of last year, compared with a high of 10,830 closings in June, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
But as residential real estate has evolved into a round-the-clock kind of business, many agents, mortgage brokers and others in the industry say that the holiday doldrums these days are more myth than reality.
Real estate agents say that the holidays tend to filter out all but the most serious of buyers and sellers, meaning that November and December can actually be an excellent time to get deals done.
"The sellers who are on the market now really do need, in fact, to sell," said Frank Cannella, branch manager for Prudential California Realty in Pleasanton. "Sellers don't go through the hassle of having their homes on the market during the holidays to test the market. There is more sincerity on the seller side."
For buyers, agents said, that can mean it's a good time to get a deal.
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