Cherry Picking

What we see in the news is the number of sales as compared to last month or last year and what that shows is that sales are up. What the figures don't show however is the amount of cherry picking going on. What I have noticed is that earlier this year people began snapping up the most pristine properties in whatever price range they were in. For example I looked at 14 houses in River Club by Lakewood Ranch in the $500,000 - $600,000 range in February. You could have bought 3 that were absolutely pristine for between $500,000 - $535,000. Right now only the ones that are not as nice remain in that range. The pristine ones now available are in the $600,000 to $650,000 range. This similiar pattern holds true in all sectors presently so the interesting thing to find out is if people are going to start paying a higher price to again obtain the most pristine units or are they going to wait until the most pristine ones fall in price. It will be interesting to see what happens."