Avi: "What a year in Santa Barbara real estate and honestly for real estate all around the world! Buyers had to compete against each other, many sellers were overly zealous, and a lot of learning and change took place for us real estate professionals.

The future is definitely not clear, but what we do know is Santa Barbara is on the map more than ever and people will continue to move here as our city grows seemingly day by day. We feel super grateful to help so many sellers get top dollar and navigate a move to another home. We're also grateful to help our buying clients as they had to dig deep to win in a crazy market!

What I can predict is this, interest rates will be the key indicator if the market continues to elicit a bidding war. In my opinion, rates can't stay this low forever, so when they rise, buying power will be significantly impacted, and sellers might not have the same amount of control as before. Who knows when that will come, but until then we will be doing our best to work on what we can control and serving our clients to the best of our ability."