Southeast real estate: panhandle prefers winter sales.

• Position: REAL ESTATE

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As the Lower 48 real estate sales market goes, so Southeast Alaska does not go--at least according to local agents. Instead, winter is surprisingly the time to list a home in the Panhandle.

DON'T CLUTTER OUR SUMMER

When homeowners down South are tidying their houses to list in the spring, Southeasters are busy getting ready to savor the blissful months of favorable weather in summer for work and play, not necessarily to sell their homes. Instead, the Panhandle's primary home sales season is winter, when folks have ample time to think about a new purchase and to coordinate a move.

"Southeast's economy is seasonal to a great degree and it's based around the summer months," says one long-time agent who has sold houses in southern Southeast for 16 years. "So the typical cycle in real estate in Southeast, at least Ketchikan, things right after holidays pick up and go constant until middle of April. That's about the time the weather gets really nice and people get outside."

The listing season slows from April to July, as residents cram a year's worth of outside activity into a few precious months. Then home listings jump again after July 4th through December, when there is a lull for the holidays and the cycle restarts.

For many, the timing of listing a home is driven by a variety of external factors--a need to relocate for work, financial pressure to sell quickly, and even an opportunity to move up to a nicer or larger property. So, unlike the Lower 48, where the late spring listing cycle is almost concrete for those wishing to take advantage of families relocating or to coordinate a move when children are out of school, the Southeast Alaska market is seen as more insular, according to industry watchers.

RECENT MARKET DISTORTIONS

Even the best-laid plans for home sellers and buyers across the nation were disrupted by recent distortions in the real estate market. Between the fallout of the subprime lending and subsequent wave of foreclosures, nothing is normal in the market of late. However, agents say, if you can look beyond those surface fluctuations, there is still some trend data to recognize.

In Ketchikan specifically, the last 12 years has been one of sharp ups and downs, though the local market perhaps weathered the extreme fallout of the Lower 48 housing crisis a bit better than most. In the late 1990s, the local pulp mill shut down and the market predictably declined through 2002, when it bottomed out having taken...