Yep, it’s true. In much of Northwest Michigan, fall is a great time for sales of vacation properties. In fact historically, the fourth quarter tends to be just behind the third in number of waterfront sales, with most of that activity happening in October and November.
Fog rolls off of Crystal Lake on a frosty fall morning
We’ve seen this in our family since the days when we were developing condominiums overlooking Crystal Lake. We found that we had plenty of traffic looking at the condos during the summer, but lots of those people had their summer lodging already accounted for. Come fall, the kids would be back in school, the colors would be turning, and the desire to own a place “up north” would have grown, resulting in sales.
This year seems to be holding fast to that pattern, with really solid levels of new inquiries and activity on a whole range of properties, but most significantly those that appeal to a vacation buyer.
Once we move beyond the fall season and into winter, the number of new buyer inquiries will diminish, although activity from existing prospects continues. Those new prospects that do come to us during this period tend to be very serious. Think about it- if you’re looking at a lakefront property in February, you’re pretty darn serious about buying one. And yes, I have shoveled snow off of the ice in front of a house to see if the ice was clear enough so the buyer could get a look through it at the lake bottom in front of the cottage they were considering buying.
On a side note, fall is my favorite time to be out and about showing property- the air is crisp, the colors are amazing, and opportunities to hike larger parcels of land are more common and more pleasant than in the heat of the summer.
