Roadmap with Irina - July 2023

Hi Iren, 

As you know, prices went up during the spring of last year, and when interest rates reached their highest point by June, the market slowed down dramatically, and the prices went down. In January of this year, they started to go up slowly and look like they finally reached the level of last June for single-family homes. Condos and townhouses are doing well: they surpassed the median sale price level of last June and continued to climb. Interest rates are still high, but the inventory is very limited, and this creates competition between the buyers, driving prices up. The number of new listings continues to drop compared to the same time last year and even last month: 3% less for single-family homes and slightly less for condos and townhouses. Check the tables below and my newsletter from last month for the exact numbers.
 
Recently, I listened to a market prediction from a few mortgage officers and economic analysts. Some of them expect the interest rates to go down either by the end of this year or the beginning of 2024. When it happens, many buyers who are on the fence right now will return to the market, and if there are not enough homes to sell, the prices will shoot up even more. Let’s see how the market develops in the next few months. Let me know if you want to know more. Stay tuned!

If you are thinking about buying or selling, let’s connect, talk about your options, run some numbers, and see if this is the right time for you. Call me, I am always here for you.

Yellowstone has always been one of the destinations where I wanted to visit, and there was always something that stopped me from doing it: kids were too little, too late to book a place to stay there, other summer plans, etc. But this year I scheduled the trip in January, so finally everything was settled.

We decided to drive to Yellowstone. 6 people in one car, 17 hours of driving one way, and one-stop for night. I thought it would be tough, but it wasn’t. We could talk about everything, listen to music, share snacks, and talk about areas that we drove by. It was great to see different landscapes on our way, seeing small towns, sometimes just one street only. It reminded me of my life in a small village when I was little.

We arrived at Yellowstone late afternoon and decided to stop to see a few geysers on the way to our hotel. It was the perfect timing: no crowd, the sun was setting down, and the spouting and bubbling landscape around us. It was surreal!

The next day we started searching for an internet connection: I needed to submit an offer, and my son needed to send homework for his summer class. We drove around stopping at geysers and waterfalls and enjoying the beauty of nature and ended up at Old Faithful Geyser where we could see the famous geyser and visit the historical hotel. The geyser was magnificent, but the hotel impressed me even more: a tall log building more than a century old with so many original features! It feels like being in a fairy tale! I wish we stayed in the hotel to enjoy it more. Finally, my son was able to finish and submit his homework, but I had to call my colleague to ask for help: the weak connection didn’t let me get into the system to work on the offer. My colleague was super helpful, and together we finally sent the offer and kept our fingers crossed. Then we continued our journey and went for a hike to the famous Prizm Lake, but the weather changed very quickly, and light rain turned into heavy rain with hail, so we had to turn back. Later that day and during the night there was a heavy rain, and we were very grateful that we were spending the night in a hotel room and not on the campground.

The next day was 4^th of July, and it was the least celebrated one for the whole of my time in America. There were some decorations around the hotel, but I think people were consumed by the beauty around them, so no decorations were necessary. We packed our belongings because the next couple of nights we planned to spend in a campground and continued exploring the park. We drove to the east part of the park stopping at every place that looked interesting. The most exciting were the hikes to Natural Bridge near Lake Village and to Lower and Upper Falls near Canyon Village: the roaring river and the canyon views were breathtaking! Then we made a quick stop at the Canyon Village where I found a very good internet connection and could reply to my emails and make a few phone calls. The great news was that our offer got accepted, so I called my buyers. What a great way of celebrating Independence Day! Their American dream came true!

Another great experience that we had that day was seeing bisons! We saw one or two a day before, but this day we saw a lot! A big group of bisons was resting and eating grass on a valley along the Yellowstone River, and we stopped the car to see these magnificent animals closer. They were super close to the road, and we had a binocular and could see those who were further away. There were tens of them with babies! Fascinating! We arrived at our campsite at dawn and quickly set up tents and make dinner and hot tea. It was a super tiring and exciting day, so we fell asleep in no time.

The next day, we visited the famous Grand Prismatic Spring, the world’s largest hot spring (and the most crowded in the park), the kids walked along the river where the hot spring water flows into, and continued our journey on the upper Yellowstone loop. We stopped at Norris Geyser Basin and walked through the bubbling, spouting stinky landscape. It turned out a few miles walk since we had to park along the road and walk toward the basin. The upper loop is completely different from the lower loop, the road goes through high mountains that still had snow on tops, cliffs hanging over the road,  and deep canyons that I was scared to even look down. This part of the park doesn’t have as many geyser basins as the lower loop, but we still stopped at the Mammoth Hot Springs, the massive travertine terraces, then had lunch at the visitor center, watched a family of elks having rest in the shade, quick-stopped to see the petrified tree, watched the Tower Fall (I think the Upper and Lower falls were way more spectacular), saw an interesting formation along the edge of a cliff, and went back to the camp. A simple dinner, hot tea, and stories around a firepit finished our full-of-impressions day.

On the last day in the park we decided to take it easy and enjoy the time. Our tent was just a few steps away from a riverbank, so we woke up late and headed to the river. We tried the water, but it was too cold to swim, so we dropped the idea. We just sat there, watched the running water, and enjoyed the sun and the quietness of the morning. After a few minutes, we noticed a bison on the other side of the river, and we were fascinated by his huge figure and watched him admiringly.  It was very nice and peaceful just to be there, but after all, we have to leave, and after packing our staff we headed home.

On the way home we made a short stop at Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho. I heard about it from my friends who were here, so we decided to check it out too. In my childhood we grew potatoes in our vegetable garden every year and during fall helped to harvest potatoes on a big scale on fields, but in the museum, we realized that our kids don’t know how it grows, so they were very involved in learning that. I wonder if we can grow good size potatoes in our backyard, I will check next year. And we, of course, had baked potatoes for late lunch. It was a great experience overall!

On the way home I was thinking that all my worries about the long drive in one car were so insignificant. We visited one of the best places on the earth and shared the experience with each other. We enjoyed the time together and got so many memories, pictures, feelings. Our trip wasn’t very long, and we didn’t go to the other side of the world, but we were together and will remember it forever. Hopefully, we will have another chance to come here.

If you never were in Yellowstone, let me know. I will be happy to share my tips and point you to the best places to visit in the park, the best place to get an internet connection, and anything else that I can share with you. The summer is still here! Hurry up to have fun!

Always yours,
Irina