Sellers are always happier if buyers are looking at their home. Buyers usually won't make an offer on a home unless they have seen it. I found a nice report in our MLS system that shows how many showings there were in St. Paul each month for the last 14 months. Our MLS system is truly amazing and keeps getting better. It has leveled the playing field between the huge brokerages and the little ones. In the bigger offices we used to ask the person at the front desk for information about showing trends and use that information to decide if our own listings were getting enough showings. Now we all have much more data to work with and it is available to all of us.
A good MLS system makes my job much easier and gives me resources that normally only a big company would have for about $30 a month. Last year they added the "book a showing" system so we can make appointments to see homes over the internet instead of by phone. The system apparently keeps track of how many showings there are each month.
For both January and February of this year there were more showings that there were in January and February of last year and for both months there were more home sales than last year. I don't have numbers from years prior for comparison but this chart follows the real estate season in Minnesota. There is more activity in the spring summer and fall than during the winter.
We can see it drop off in November. There are also fewer homes on the market during those months so it all works out. I can also produce a chart that shows how many homes I showed each of these months. My chart had the same highs and lows except my October last year was the highest month. I had some buyers last October who looked at a lot of houses and I showed a total of 163, which was news to me. I don't really keep track that way. Buyers need to see as many houses as they need to see and it isn't the same for each buyer. The buyers who know which neighborhood they want to live in see the fewest homes, but most buyers have more than one neighborhood in mind.
Showings were really up in Jan/Feb of this year which is awesome but then the tax credit didn’t come into play until later in the spring. Hopefully the market won’t come to a screeching halt in May and that this is just a sign of good things to come as the twin cities real estate market continues to recover.