These cooler temps remind me that we are in the middle of fall. I love this time of year, not too hot, not too cold. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which is my favorite holiday. In other parts of the country, changing leaves. This time of the year can be somewhat frantic as you prepare for the holidays and the end of the year. I hope that you get a chance to slow down and enjoy this season for all that it offers.

We hope you enjoyed our 3rd Quarter Market Update in last month’s Real Talk. If you missed it, there is a link below to the update which is now being featured as a blog post on our website. The market is mostly unchanged from last month’s quarterly update, but I did want to note a couple of things. First, the big news is that Zillow is ending its i-buyer program, which includes selling off hundreds of millions in real estate and laying off about 25% of their staff. This is a major, industry rocking announcement. I will expand more on this topic in an upcoming blog post, but the summary is that this was not wholly unexpected and will be a great thing for both the national and Tampa Bay market. The second bit of information I wanted to share was about the cooling trend I noted in my last market update. We saw a continuation of that pattern in the local condo market, but that trend had a disturbance in the local single family home market. We believe that the slight increase in the single-family absorption rate was due to families needing to secure housing before or near the start of the school year. We will continue to watch to see if the single-family absorption rate comes back down and re-enters that cooling pattern that it showed over the prior four months.

November has a lot of holidays and important events packed in. I mentioned Thanksgiving before, but we also celebrate, Veterans Day, Diwali (for those who celebrate), Election Day (we just had our St. Pete city elections on Tuesday), and the start of Chanukah (for those who celebrate). We at Spitzer Rutland wish you a Happy Holiday season and hope you get to spend it with those you love!