F
or potential buyers who hope to glimpse where the market is heading by checking the monthly sales statistics as part of their buying preparations, there is one important point to remember: don’t forget to look at the weather. More specifically, anyone who hopes to gain some insight into the current sales situation by looking up March’s sales also should check the weather for the months preceding it. Why? It’s simple: People look before they buy and they aren’t going to look at a property in person if the weather is not conducive to visiting. That was the situation up and down the Mid-Atlantic region in the late winter and early spring, as cold, snowy weather seemed to cycle through for weeks on end. Even though the tempera-
ture for this past February was no different than that recorded for February 2013, with the mean temperature, or midpoint, for both months at 36 degrees, February 2014 felt colder, and was certainly more miserable overall. That’s because February 2014 had just 11 sunny days all month as compared to 20 sunny days in the preceding February. And, as everyone knows about that dreary time two months ago, it snowed. Again. Altogether, between rain and snow, February 2014 had close to a half-inch more precipitation of one kind or another than its predecessor (precipitation is not to be confused with just snow, since an inch of rain equals anywhere between five to 10 inches of snow, depending on how wet See SUNNY Page 2