I’ve spent the past few days immersed in the Waynesboro, Virginia real estate market; the differences between it and the Charlottesville market are frequently striking.

It’s not an apple-to-apples comparison, but …

In Charlottesville/Albemarle, using the Charlottesville MLS, there are currently 1181 residential properties on the market and 295 under contract.

In Waynesboro/Augusta, using the Waynesboro/Augusta MLS, there are 678 active, and 79 properties under contract. (Using the C’Ville MLS, those numbers are 291 and 43, respectively).

* In Waynesboro Trulia shows 197 homes for sale and Zillow shows 10.

A few observations –

– The Realtors and sellers tend to all be very friendly.
– There are far fewer vacant houses on the market in Waynesboro than in Charlottesville.
– Showings are much easier to set up in Charlottesville – all we typically do is call the owner and leave a message with the time we expect to arrive. Contrast that with the Waynesboro experience – many of the houses seem to request 24-hour notice for showings and almost all properties seem to have “Call the listing office” as the showing instructions. (This may be attributable to the different lockboxes as much as to the cultural differences)
– My favorite agent remarks so far – “No magnetic Realtor signs on car when showing.” Ah … stealth marketing!

Waynesboro is much closer in reality than it appears on the map:

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And the number of commuters between the localities is growing every year. It’s a shame that the most recent data is seven years old. I expect that today’s numbers are much, much greater.

* Coincidentally, a “cost of commute” calculator just came into my email – more on this later.

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