Before I get to my weekly update for the week of June 14-20th, 2020 for Milton, Georgetown and Glen Williams, I thought I would do a bit of discussion about open houses.

There's a debate on right now as to whether we should be allowed to bring back open houses.  As you know, as soon as COVID hit, everything stopped and basically even open houses stopped. So the question is, were they effective? Should we bring them back because we need them? In my opinion , I have said for years that they are not effective, though they're great lead generators for agents. I've actually sat in the living room and watched people- neighbors, from houses two doors down, three doors down, come in just to look at the houses out of curiosity -they're not buyers.  As far as I'm concerned, as an agent, it's a great tool, as a lead generator.  All those neighbors I have met, and one day - even four, five, six, seven years down the road, they might say, "Hey Cliff, I met you at an open house you did on Robertson Crescent in Milton." And, so, for me (and most agents) it's a great lead generator.  That's why we do them.  But as far as actually selling the home, the chances are very slim that the home is going  to sell from having an open house.

The other thing you have to think about right now is how an open house will actually be run. You are going to have to limit the number of people going in, but even doing that over a two hour period, you're looking at possibly twenty or thirty people entering  the home. That's a big risk and is the reward really worth it? I don't think so - I think we should keep them away for now -we don't really need them right now. We have virtual open houses, virtual tours, we have Google Earth.  We can do so much research now, so do we really need them? Another way to look at it too is that most people going to open houses are tire kickers. If somebody really wants to see a house, they'll either call the agent directly or they'll call me, as their listing agent, to take them through.  When I can spend an hour taking them through the house - one on one - as opposed to the scenario of when they come to an open house and I'm too busy dealing with Joe Smith that is talking about his golf game for 45 minutes.  Meanwhile, my serious buyers are wandering through the house and they leave and I haven't even gotten the chance to talk to them because Joe is taking all my time. I think it's more effective to hold off and have them later on. 

Getting back to the topic of recent sales for the week of June 14th-20th: Milton has done well. It has actually calmed down a little bit from last week. We had more sales last week than this week. We had 65 in 2019 as opposed to 37 this year, so we're still holding - we had 40 last week. So the number of sales have actually decreased in Milton, but, the prices are holding up nicely. 19 sales are detached, $973k on average, 14 days on the market. It's amazing how the bigger homes are selling so quickly.  You know if they're priced right, they're moving. Three sales are semis - $740k average, nine days on the market. Nine days - that's pretty fast and for a townhouse 14 sales, $730k average - that has gone up a little bit - and six days on the market.  Six days - they're selling quickly. So if you're worried about selling your townhouse, don't worry about it in Milton - price it right, you'll sell it within a week. Moving on to Georgetown. Georgetown is interesting, because the number of sales have actually really increased over the past week as opposed to the previous week. We had 19 sales in Georgetown and Glen Williams in the past week. The week before we had 12 - so sales have really really gone up. Prices have gone up as well, a little bit. We had one townhouse sell at $720k and one semi sold at $724k. And again like in Milton, we have mostly detached homes. We had 17 sales of detached almost a million on average and 11 days in the market. Think about that. When can you remember a million dollar house selling 11 days, on average? So some will sell in two or three and some will sell a week or two. Things are encouraging. Things are picking up. I think they're going to continue to pick up for the rest of the summer because we're basically three months behind now.

Anyways, that's it for my analysis. Any questions, let me know - I'd be happy to help you. Take care and stay safe!