Somethings Missing. Where Have the People Gone?

A popular suspense scene has a street smart, rumpled detective type walking around a crime site. Skilled professionals with high-tech gear, are hustling about. Anxious superiors are demanding quick closure. Conclusions are being reached. But the old-school character is seeing what's missing and wondering...wondering why, wondering how could it be, wondering what does it mean.

On the streets of Madison neighborhoods there are many old-school detective types walking in and out of houses wondering about what's missing. They're Realtors. What's missing is the home owner. Anxious superiors are waving off the questions as if shoeing pesky flies, but the questions persist. If the real estate economy is going to re-boom, it will have to happen without people because we're not seeing them where they should be, and that's in the houses which are selling.

If the activity in the $200,000 homes being bought by first time buyers is going to trickle upward to the more expensive price points, there will need to be sellers who become buyers and they don't seem to be living in the homes being sold. There are no statistics to tell us if the home is vacant or occupied by an owner, and the short-sale and foreclosure data is not being reported consistently in the South Central WI MLS. Without this data, forecasting the activity in upper price ranges is reduced to wishful thinking.

A walk around the plant will give you a good idea of the vitality of your business and in our case the plant is the market. I, like other Realtors, am seeing an inordinate number of empty houses. The people are gone and I don't know for sure, but the economy suggests they didn't buy a bigger house on a bridge loan, so I might be accurate to assume a high percentage are renting elsewhere and elsewhere is not in Madison.

Unless the people who are selling 3 bedroom homes start buying 4 bedroom homes before June 30th, the notation that the next rush to buy will happen in the upper price points is unsupported by facts. Somethings don't add up. Somethings missing. I'm wondering what this means.