Bainbridge Island Real Estate Market Report: March 2024

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, A WEIRD MARKET IS NORMAL

When I was new to the business in the summer of 2014, the housing market was just beginning to rise from its years-long bottom, which was the result of the housing market bubble’s burst.  

I firmly believe “if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” So, as a keen observer of everything and everyone around me, one of the most important aspects of the industry I focused on was how the veteran agents described the housing market. 

“This is a weird market.” I heard it from dozens of agents, yet nobody had a concrete description of what that meant. Then, the chorus was the same in 2015. And 2016. And 2017, etc., etc. Every single year I’ve been in this business, agents describe the market this way (granted, 2020 and 2021 were way off the charts of what “weird” can be, but that’s beside the point here). 

The perpetual uncertainty about the future of our economy makes it hard for both the emotional and analytical sides of our brains to make decisions while accepting significant unknowns. This is true every single month of every single year. So, when every year’s economic conditions and headlines are different, it is difficult to predict the future by relying on data that is a historical record of the past. One experienced agent in the Windermere network described using statistics as “nothing more than educated guesswork.” 

As I’m about to hit my 10th anniversary as a licensed agent, I’ve come to accept that it's a weird business that operates at the crossroads of subjectivity –high emotional stakes –  and objectivity – the unemotional grounding of financial metrics. That’s why my first tagline was “Turning the Art of Real Estate into a Science,” because there are two sides to this coin. 

Speaking with a financial advisor friend recently about how we operate in people’s lives, he noted that both of our industries have an essential human element as well as a crucial technical element. No two clients need the same balance of head and heart. Still, every client deserves skilled representation that efficiently determines what each individual client requires and delivers it with a personalized strategy. 

So that’s my approach through every weird market the economy can throw at me: deliver skilled representation with a personalized strategy. And if you’re wondering, given the landscape of my industry right now, my new tagline is “Expertise Matters: Now, More Than Ever.” 

Please check out my Bainbridge Market Report below with all of March's sales metrics.

Thanks,

Jason

P.S. Sharing the love of some clients

Jason came recommended by one of his colleagues and our initial exchanges with him were upbeat. We were dealing with a complicated mess of a situation, post-flooding, and he helped break a complicated process down into manageable steps. No matter how many obstacles we encountered, Jason’s good cheer, competence, and clear communication were all unflagging. 

He did a thorough job of tracking the market and communicated clearly his thoughts. It's hard to overstate how much support we needed dealing with the logistics of preparing the house to sell in the midst of the pandemic and with myriad challenges and setbacks, from a flooding bathroom to the death of my father; Jason always helped us get our arms around our objectives, worked with contractors and subcontractors--in many cases running interference with them on our behalf. 

The simplest way to say it is this: the fact that Jason personally arranged emergency dump runs for us in the days before the house closed… can't get more supportive than that!

-- Bruce Barcott & Claire Dederer