The date is March 22nd, 2017 and you own Gary’s Variety Store on Main Street, Anytown, Ontario. Things are going great. Customers file in non-stop. Milk, newspapers and coffee crisp bars are flying off the shelves. Scratch lotto? Don’t even get me started. Everyone’s scratchin!
Business is what you’d call brisk. After all, the closest competition is 8 blocks away so you have a seriously captive audience. A light bulb burns out. All good, you’ll get to it tomorrow. The one fridge breaks down so you squeeze the milk, butter and cheese into the same cooler.
That broken floor tile is duct taped down all nice like. Why would you repair it when in spite of some recent price increases, the people are still shopping and filling up that cash register.
Betty Buyer starts noticing that the floors get swept a little less and the cashier is less concerned with how her day is going. She start feeling a mild case of resentment with Gary and his team! But again, what is she going to do? Drive across town to get that loaf of bread on Sunday morning?
All of a sudden a sign gets installed a few doors down on the opposite side of the street. “Hmmm…” thinks Betty as she slows down to look. Another variety store is opening up. She turns to keep walking and spots another new one just opening its doors for the first time.
She looks in Gary’s less-than-clean windows and decides to keep strolling to check out the competition. Spotless, friendly and offering roughly the same products, she ventures in. Meanwhile a few other shoppers skip past Gary’s store to venture the other way to yet another new store that just opened up.
Meanwhile, Gary is standing in the front door of his shop looking more bewildered than usual.
The duct tape holds down the broken tile, the old cooler sits idle while the dust bunnies are doing their thing on the floor. And now the milk, newspapers and coffee crisp are flying out of the other stores!
What does this have to do with real estate?
It has everything to do with real estate. Namely, supply and demand. This spring, the market was thirsty for inventory so buyers were lining up to get in. Multiple offers dominated the landscape while defeated buyers were turned away.
Fast forward 6 months and the market is still very healthy but for one thing. The home owners with the duct taped tiles, dust bunnies and broken fill-in-the-blank-here are now experiencing the same emotion that Gary did.
Where did they go?
Supply kicked up so those same buyers now have option 2, 3, 4 and 5.
As of writing this, there are 45 homes listed between Scott Street and Lakeshore Road priced between $300 – 500,000. The average asking price is $34,000 over the average sale price in the same area for the last 3 months.
If you are a store owner (or home seller) you can still do very well in today’s market but you must have a plan to present, price and market your home.
Looking for help with that? We are here to chat anytime.
Photo credit goes to Mike Petrucci. Check him out at www.MikePetrucci.com
Thank-you for visiting.
THEbTEAM