Brian over at How To Invest In Real Estate posted a story from the Arizona Republic about how sellers are basically clueless about the current real estate slowdown and are still looking to sell their homes for the inflated prices of the last two years. Realtors are having to educate them on the current market dynamics and find ways to make them realize they may need to lower their price, not once, but several times.
But one line in the article really jumped out at me and made me question the knowledge of most Realtors:
You can't count on city or town medians or appraisals but have to look at what comparable homes in the neighborhood are selling for, they said.
No shit.
As a real estate investor, this is the first thing that was drilled into my head. It should be the most self-evident statement ever to anyone remotely involved in real estate, yet at this meeting of 200 members of the Southeast Valley Association of Realtors, they had to specifically point this out.
And these are supposed to be real estate "professionals".
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
AZ Republic Article On Teaching Sellers
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5 comments:
From my experience, a lot of "professionals" are clueless in this industry - even with some of the most basic concepts. :-(
Yeah, like is the phrase, "Priced below market" even a logical sentence?
and I would definitely agree that sellers seem to be clueless about the slowdown in the real estate market, although my buying experience was back in June. at that time, the owner of almost every house I saw was in a total fantasy land in terms of what they thought they could get for their property. I made friends w/the seller's agent on the house I ended up buying and he told me about the 4 months he spent trying to educate the seller re: what their house was actually worth. they originally insisted he list it at $379k and I probably ended up over-paying by $10k when I closed on it at $285k...
And the amazing thing is that the media is full of stories about the housing slowdown and these sellers still don't get it. I do think the media is overplaying it a bit, but still, sellers should have a clue they aren't going to get top dollar now.
Instead of educating sellers, I'd probably just sit out the beginning of the down-turn to let panic set in before I started making offers. After all, do the sellers really ever believe the investor/buyer is trying to help them out, or just take advantage?
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