No more bidding wars
This is an update of a blog I posted about a month ago, when I wrote about three houses on my street that were for sale.
They’re still available, at prices ranging from the mid $200,000s to the high $700,000s. As you can see from the photo, which I took a few years ago during the height of the fall season, it’s a desirable street to live on. Even my block, at the poor end of the neighborhood, has a certain charm. This is one of Chico’s old suburbs. It dates from the late 1950s to early 1960s. In some ways, it’s as pleasant as the city’s vintage pre-World War II neighborhoods. The trees on my street are as tall and shady as they are in the avenues or the Barber neighborhood.
It’s clear from how the houses for sale on my street have fared that the days of the bidding wars are over. Real estate isn’t such a hot commodity anymore. For now, residential property has stopped being perceived as the road to instant wealth and has reverted to its old function of providing shelter and serving as one of the most potent symbols of domestic life.
That’s why the houses on my street are bound to sell sooner or later. Now that the holidays are here and winter is on its way, the chances that they will sell anytime soon are shrinking. But come spring, they’ll be ready for a wave of would-be homebuyers who won’t be looking at houses primarily as an investment. Investors will wait until the market has bottomed out to get back in.
Come spring, even more “for sale” signs may have sprouted. There may be six available houses on my street instead of three. We could be looking at the best buyers’ market since the turn of the 21st century. Some real bargains could be out there by then.