The Hot Dog Index
My brother is a Certified Financial Planner (in the old days they used to largely be referred to as Stock Brokers.) I can remember him telling me back when the stock market was particularly unstable that there was a simple way to read the market. Some investors track the Dow, the S & P and various futures markets and various indices. He said the easiest one to read was the Hot Dog Index. You just looked out your window if your office was anywhere near Wall street all you had to do was measure the line standing by the Hot Dog vendor on the corner. The longer the line the worse the market. If the traders and brokers weren’t active or making money that’s all they could afford for lunch. If the line was really long it further meant that there was no rush to get back to the trading floor because there wasn’t a lot going on that day. Today I had a chance to develop my own index in Real Estate.
I happened to be taking a continuing education course this morning at the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors. The topic dealt with Grants and First-time Buyer Programs. I was amazed to see that there were nearly 70 agents in class boning up on this important subject. That is nearly 2 to 3 times as many students as one typically sees in any of the classes that they offer. After class I wanted to determine that this wasn’t some sort of aberation so I grilled a few of the attendees.Each of the people that I questioned told me that they were working with really eager buyers who wanted to take advantage of whatever programs were out there. They all added that they had been very successful doing this with their clients, even in THIS MARKET. Well, that part came as a bit of a surprise based on what we typically hear every day.
“There are no houses to sell…. Everything is going way over the asking price…and blah, blah, blah,” What one doesn’t hear, is
“Wow, we just got another buyer a great deal and free grant money too.”
But that’s what all of these people seem to be embracing as we went through the various PowerPoints from 6 different presenters. This coupled with the latest statistics on home showings (which are the highest they have ever been excluding the last two Pandemic years which was highly unusual) led me to a conclusion. This is truly a great time to buy. Even if you think you bring little to the table as a buyer (with all these grant programs and other incentives) you might have a better opportunity than you ever would have begun to think. So what should I call this “index”: The Tuned In Agent Index. These agents would not have been wasting their time trying to learn about something that will have little to no value to their books of business. They are focusing on things that will get them results and provide added value to their clients. Check in with your agent to get the inside scoop. You might find out that a better title for this index might just be the American Dream Index.
“Hey, I wrote the book on Real Estate, literally.”
Author Brendan J. Cunningham is a New York Licensed Associate Real Estate Broker, lead of the Platinum Team at HusVar Real Estate, as well as an accomplished writer, Shakespearean trained professional actor, and podcaster.
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