Saturday, 29 March 2014

Spring buying season or not, Myrtle Beach area Realtors busy

Spring buying season or not, Myrtle Beach area Realtors busy



Some Realtors along the Grand Strand said they’ve had an active winter, but opinions differ on whether the spring buying season has started.

Indeed it has, said Penny Boling of Century 21 Boling & Associates.

March has been a door banger at the agency, and Boling said the office tally board is packed with sales finalized during the month.

Johnnie Greene of Re/Max Southern Shores said she’s had a busy March, too, mostly helping first-time buyers. But she said she thinks the spring surge of buyers has been delayed by the lousy and prolonged winter weather and that it’ll come when warmer days last longer than a day or two at a time.

“Lord knows they’ve had enough time pent up to decide where they want to be,” Greene said.

Marvin Heyd, president of Prudential Myrtle Beach Real Estate, said last week that his office too had been busy through the bitter-weather days, but it was besieged by people calling about property and saying they’d be looking when they were in town this spring.

“I think February was a little bit of an issue because of the ice,” Boling said.

And she wouldn’t be upset if the rush her office is seeing isn’t the start of the spring season.

That surge would be a bonus on top of a bonus March.

Boling said that the spring season is usually associated with Easter, but that falls on April 20 this year, about as late as it gets in any year. So it would be a stretch to think that this year’s spring rush would correspond with the holiday.

The normal Grand Strand home-buying calendar starts off slowly in January, picks up in the spring and stays active through June. Then it slows down again as the Dog Days descend on the area, picking up again as the weather turns cooler in the fall.

Last year was different, though, as the real estate market began a steady climb out of the depths of the great recession in the fall of 2012 and continued to gain strength each month through the winter.

Sales went flat in November last year and an actually fell in February when compared to the year before.

Heyd and Mandy Becker, broker in charge at Re/Max Southern Shores, are anticipating a bang-up spring though, and Becker at least expects heightened activity through the summer.

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