Where are all the houses?

As we approach Super Bowl Sunday we should be seeing the start of the busiest portion of the annual real estate calendar. Wednesday "Broker Tour" open houses should number in the 30-40 range each week and we should see new inventory popping on the market left and right. Instead, what we're seeing is an average of 5-10 new listings each week. More distressing though is the lack of Broker Tour property. Two weeks ago there were a whopping 6 showings available to the brokerage community and last week there were 8. To put this in perspective, in October of 2005 there were 65 properties open on a single Wednesday.

I cannot understand why any listing agent, trying to make a positive impression on the market, wouldn't open up for an hour on Wednesday. Also, why aren't sellers pushing for more and more exposure? Normally we've seen listing agents introduce their properties to MLS on Thursday night or Friday to give them the highest likelihood of attracting "direct" buyers to their open houses two days later. This week I am going to be trying a different approach. I will be bringing a listing on the market on Monday, trying to attract the buyers' agents to bring their clients in. The buyers are out there, let's make sure they can see the properties!