Spring Market

In a cold northern shelf city like Ottawa Canada, when does the spring market start:

a. February 2nd, groundhog day

b. March 21st, the first official day of spring

c. never, it’s always winter

d. none of the above?

I would (arbitrarily) argue “d,” none of the above.

For me, the spring market begins when snowbirds begin to trickle back to the north after a hard winter spent absorbing rays in Florida or Mexico. It begins when depressed Canucks finally get off their lazy-girl-chairs or ascend from their basement redoubts to notice that days are getting longer if not warmer.

When does all that happen?

Around February 15th.

For my youngest daughter, Jessica, and me, we used to say spring started as soon as the sun was up before 7 am. Why 7 am? Well, she had to catch a bus to her arts school at about that time so we were driving in the dark until

around

February 18th when the sun finally rises before 7 am.

Here’s the data for this year (February 18th 2017):

Sunrise 6:59 am 

Sunset 5:34 pm

Total daylight 10:35 hours minutes

This is more than just an arbitrary marker.

If you are a renovator, realtor, contractor, constructor, builder, retailer, summer camp, a home seller,

a landlord,
a property manager, you name it, you’d better have your marketing ready to go by February 15th or you will miss the spring market.

If you wait ‘til March 21st, you’ve lost a month to your competition who’ve been out there for five weeks already out-competing you.

Prof Bruce