Weathering the Dog Days of Home Sales

Home sellers, brace yourselves. The calendar is not on your side. Spring, the peak market for buying and selling homes, has come and gone, and a long, sultry summer lies ahead. As the weather gets hotter, home sales in most parts of the Washington region cool.

If this year is typical, the number of sales -- defined as contracts and contingent contracts -- will decline month by month through the end of the year, except for a significant uptick in October. Last year, for example, the sales dropped by 20 percent from June through August in the close-in Virginia suburbs (Arlington and Fairfax counties, plus Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax cities), according to data from Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, the local multiple listing service.

The summer slump can't simply be blamed on the overall housing market slowdown last year. The pattern was similar in the previous two years. The number of home sales in Northern Virginia fell 23 percent between June and August of 2005, and 15 percent during that period in 2004.

The District and Montgomery County followed a pattern similar to that in Northern Virginia over the past three years. But sales in Prince George's County showed less of a seasonal swing. In 2006, for example, sales declined only 4 percent between June and August.

Should a seller give up and replace the "for sale" sign with one that says "gone fishing"? Not necessarily. There still are buyers out there, sweaty though they may be. And there is that October contract flurry to anticipate. But if you need to sell, it will be better to slap an attractive price on that house early in the summer, lest it linger through the dog days.

The "for sale" sign went up in Allison and John Barnes's front yard a little more than a week ago. Their house, priced at $435,000, is a four-bedroom Colonial in the Fairmont subdivision of Manassas.

According to Allison, they had planned to put the house on the market back in March, but their pre-sale prep work took more time than they had anticipated. They painted rooms, replaced carpet and curtains, repaired faucets and re-stained some stairs that showed scratches.

"I'm a good painter, I'm just not fast," she said. And now that their two sons have finished kindergarten and first grade, the family has more time to focus on selling the house. "We're realistic," Allison said. "We know there are a lot of people out there with their houses on the market. We're hoping for the best."

Their real estate agent, Fortune Odend'hal V, is with Long & Foster's Manassas Central office and is particularly pessimistic about June. "I've never, ever had a good June," said Odend'hal, who has been in the business since 1998. He chalks it up to families being busy with their kids' end-of-school concerts and other activities, graduations, and preparations for vacation.

"It tends to pick back up in July," he said. "If they've got kids, boy are they hustling in July and August because they want to get their kids in school."

It is a good bet that buyers who spend their sunny summer weekends hauling children through house after house are serious about making a move.

The summertime sales picture is different near the Chesapeake Bay. "This is the height of our market because of the boat traffic," said Leigh Lawson-Everstine, president of Metro Bay Realty in Edgewater. The statistics bear her out. Sales in Anne Arundel County have remained fairly constant between June and August of the past three years. Then they have headed sharply down from September through the end of the year, except for a brief resurgence in October.