Things have been hopping,as you might imagine. We saw a bunch of houses last weekend. We went out with our Realtor Tom on Saturday and he showed us a few houses. It was funny because there were a bunch of couples with their respective Realtors, all seeing most of the same houses as we were seeing. It was like a little real estate wagon train traveling around Babylon Village.

There’s a lot of furious activity now. I assume it’s because people are trying to slip in under the Nov 30th deadline and get that eight grand from Uncle Sugar.

Most of the homes we saw had little or no interest for us, so I’m planning to write about those homes sometime soon. Right now, I’m also working on the July Sold Homes post. There were ten homes listed as being sold in July 2009 in Babylon Village, so it’s going to be a long post. I should be able to push it out this weekend.

This is an open discussion thread, so I invite any and all readers to pipe up and say something. Feel free to leave a comment and ask a question, make an observation, tell us what you’re up to or just introduce yourself and say hi.

I’m very interested in hearing fellow home shoppers, especially their impressions of any open houses that they’ve seen, but I’d also like to hear from any sellers and their experiences and observations.

I’m posting this “sticky”, which means that it will stay at the top of the page over the weekend even if I post new stuff afterward. If you’re accustomed to stopping by and glancing at the top of the page to see if there’s new stuff, scroll on down a bit before you click away.

Enojy your weekend, everyone. Happy hunting.

Homes in Babylon

  • Total: 106
  • Babylon School District: 76
  • BSD and Under 600K: 36
  • Condos/Coops:11

We seemed to be hovering in the low to mid 90’s for total home in Babylon over the summer, but now the inventory is creeping up. 106 is as I as I’ve seen it in some time, maybe since last summer.

Unfortunately, the pickings are pretty slim at the lower end of the market. We’ve edged up our max price a bit to try and tried to look at a few more homes, but not much really appeals to us.

My feeling is that there’s a lot of “shadow inventory”, sellers waiting in the wings for a real estate recovery. My subjective observation is that there seems to be a higher percentage of estate sales, retirement sales and divorce sales in the mix than there was a couple years back. The recently purchased, nicely renovated homes on MLS have — to a certain extent — given way to the “charming” houses that have kitchens and baths from the Age of Aquarius and need “a little TLC”. In other words, the people who are selling now are the people who need to sell. Those who think they can hang on are hoping to ride out the bad real estate market.

Unfortunately, I’m looking to buy now…right now…and the possibility of better homes being available at lower prices some time next year isn’t helping me out here. For those of you who are still on the sidelines waiting, this coming spring could bring some serious deals.