I was riding up the lift with an older gentleman the other day, making small talk about the whether. I happened to say “boy we have gotten a lot of snow already this year”, to which my companion replied can I tell you a story about how the Native Americans knew how much snow we would get on any given year. Sure I said you have a captured audience for the next 6 minutes.

Here’s how the story goes:
A recent settler to the region was splitting wood for his first winter in America, when the local chief walks by and looks at the pile and says “we gonna have a heepum cold winter.” The settler takes this clue as a warning and sets out to double his efforts. A few days later the chief looks at the man’s pile of wood and says “we gonna have a heepum-heepum cold winter” fearful for his family’s safety again the settler begins to work even harder on cutting and stacking wood for his fire. The third time the Chief walks by he says”we gonna have a Heepum-heepum-heepum cold winter. This time the settler is truly alarmed and asks the chief how he knows the winter is going to be so bad, and the chief says “Indians can tell by how much wood the white man stacks.” (LOL)

Does your expectation create your reality? Someone asked me the other day how’s the market and I said its fine with seasonal adjustments it will be on average this year. This person said, but the papers say the real estate market is awful they told me they read it was down 10%. I said where? He said well across the country, well it’s a good thing I don’t sell across the county. In reality the places than ran up the fastest in the past 10 years like Florida and California are experiencing a price adjustment and when added to the overall picture will tend to adjust the national averages down a bit.

The sellers’ who own 2nd home property we tend to work with sell for a variety of reasons, such as lack of use, the youngest one is starting college, or they are down sizing for retirement. The common theme I hear is we would like to sell but we don’t have to and that seller doesn’t fire sale his vacation property. He’ll use it until it sells and he’ll wait till they have an offer that meets their goal.

So keep stacking the wood, have a cozy fire to stay warm this winter and I’ll see you on the lifts. But remember, people’s perceptions are a funny thing, and I like to think the glass is half full.

Please share your comments with me.
Steve Loynd, Managing Broker
Alpine Lakes Realty - Lincoln, NH