Have you weighed yourself since the beginning of the Year?

I’m positively an absolute coward and in complete denial over my “current” weight.

The bathroom scale has accumulated ½ inch of dust but still manages to glow menacing at me when I sneak past the digital light. I’m 56 years old. I hate that darn scale. I won’t throw it away because my conscience tells me I’ll need to step on it soon. It might have valuable information in it to save my life. HA, sure….I know generally, about how much I weigh, right? I don’t need some accurate measuring device to tell ME what I know! Right? Stupid scale. This is worse than living with my mother, nagging me to clean up my room, hang up my clothes, do my homework, etc. Apparently I’m merely trading one bad habit for another. Unfortunately, MY DENIAL spills over into my work and although I think I know how our market performed in Manistee County last year, I only guessing, unless of course I gather some facts and figures off our MLS.

So (again I’ve avoided the bathroom scale), I sat down and made myself a little chart.
I’m somewhat surprised that despite our dreadful economy, we didn’t do as badly as I imagined once I faced the numbers.

The moment of truth was actually better than my fears. Now when sellers ask me how things are doing, I’ve got answers. If you have been successfully living in a bomb shelter and cut off from all newspapers, computers, TV for the last few years a declining market might be a surprise. Most of us though, have accepted the reality.

Yet actual numbers do make a difference between the sky is falling and can we weather this.


I live and work in Manistee County, Michigan, so this is my home turf. These numbers matter to me, so let me share them.

Remember though, JUST like weighing yourself on a bathroom scale, this is just raw numbers. The anomalies haven’t been discovered or removed. In other words, you don’t know if I’m weighing myself with my snowsuit on or if I’m in my swimsuit. I don’t have time to determine if everyone’s sold information is completely accurate. And, this information doesn’t include FSBO’s. I would say the information and the conclusions you can draw from it are fairly close. Because frankly, my snowsuit outweighs my swimsuit by at least 5-10 pounds. Unfortunately, not enough to disguise the truth.

Maybe I’ll go dust off the bathroom scale( tomorrow).

Anyway, here's what you need to know.

Differences between 2007 and 2008 - We saw a 9 % decline in the number of residential properties sold, and the difference between list and sell price went from 9% in 2007 to 12% in 2008. Number of days on the market increased from an average of 195 days in 2007 to 210 days in 2008.

For more information, don't hesitate to contact me.