“The trend is your friend.”
We don’t know who said it, or when. But we believe the spirit of that statement is to ignore the micro fluctuations in the data and focus on the overall, macro-level pattern. Let the trend speak to you. Ignore the noise in between. The noise is only there to confuse you. Actually, the noise is really there because buyer activity ebbs and flows with the freeze and thaw cycle as well as with the school year. Though it’s tempting to follow the seasonal peaks and valleys, it’s plain to see that prices and sales always decline between summer and fall, and then subside again between fall and winter. It’s as predictable as potholes in the Minnesota spring. As such, it’s less meaningful to compare June to October and far more meaningful to compare October of this year to October of last year. Because of this high degree of seasonality in our market, comparisons across all of our reporting environments utilize a year-over-year benchmark.
