kpfeif wrote: All of a sudden it's gone crazy here. We've had five showings per week for the last three weeks, and that's during the Holiday season and in a cold Wisconsin winter.

Love to hear the positives!

We are planning to be back on the market in NoVA a week from today after six weeks off and LOTS of improvements. We already had one call from a Realtor who showed it when it was listed before and now has another client who wants our school pyramid. She remembered the house, noticed that the listing was expired but there was no sold info so she called me. The husband saw it last week and the wife is coming from FL to see it this Sat. (They have a relo pkg so no home to sell.) After all this time it would be so great to get a good offer without even going back on the market! (We're not holding our breath for this particular offer but the interest was encouraging.)

Good Luck to everyone selling now!

Here in the metro Detroit area very few homes are moving. Buyers are an elusive breed! In my immediate area quite a few homes on the market are approaching the one year mark.
The one or two homes that have recently sold have gone for thousands less than the city's appraised value. Gee I wonder if the assessing department will lower our SEV ?!? ; p

Laura1202, that is good news!!! Can't believe it's been 6 weeks off market already..What type of improvements did you make?

Laura1202, I hope the house sells now! I'm also curious - what improvements did you make?

I'm buying. minet's buying. katsmeow's buying.

well,I just heard that 5 people in my company have signed or are about to sign contracts to buy here--2 of them in *my* neighborhood.

I recently sold my house in Southern California (for a huge profit), things are not as bad as too many people say, there are buyers out there.

Good luck, Laura!

Three homes in my development have sold in the last month; in one case, it had been on the market more than three months and the owner finally got realistic about the price. The other two were priced more in keeping with the downturn in the market and sold within 6 weeks.

In our townhoues development, prices have dropped from $400K-$420K (depending on size/model) last year to $375K-$385K now (the slowest time of the year, plus a downturn in the market). If priced right, they are slower than the last few years, but will move.

In general, things move more quickly in this area after Super Bowl Sunday.

There are plenty of buyers in the starter home range. Here in this town, it's up to 450k. The ones above that sit.

I decided to test IF the house is overpriced. I have a sign with brochures in front of the house. I'm underpriced using the comps. I made up a brochure saying "Priced To Sell" without giving the actual price. I was hoping that someone who IS INTERESTED would call and ask. Nope, that did not happen. I went through 85 brochures in 2 months. The first 65 had a price. The last 20 did not.
I think it's the market, not the price of the house. Nobody wants to commit. I'm not sure what the buyers are waiting for. Maybe in the NE, it's the weather or they think the market will crash!?
I took the house off the market for the holidays. It makes me feel better to think that the reason the house is not sold is because it's not for sale currently. Sick, but true.
I guess the only way to CREAT a buyer is to give the house away. Maybe I should make up brochures & say FREE to the next person. I'll see if that will generate a phone call. *sarcasm*

I am in FL in a bubble area and have seen major movement in the past month or two. More homes have sold or gone under contract in the past two months than in the 6 months prior.

Also in same bubble area, we used to get constant solicitation via mail from investors during the crazy boom period. That completely stopped about a year ago....until - the past month that it has picked back up all of a sudden(though not same volume).

The market has picked up steam! It doesn't mean that the overpriced fixer-uppers are going to sell - but decent homes are getting sold.

I even heard of a home that had a bidding war very recently and buyer bought for $10k over list price!

My prediction is that the fence sitters will see this movement and will 'jump in" before prices go high or before they lose that perfect house.

I want to buy too! Solid financing, no home to sell, etc. I'm also in Portland and our countdown is on. Our rental owner is selling the property we are now in so we may be kicked out end of Jan. I do not want to move to another month to month rental then move again. Houses here are selling but you have to wait for the sellers to lower the price. If you go in over $5K less (yep, one percent) apparently it's insulting. We have our eye on one that has been dropping and hope it comes into our range. We may make our best offer and see if they will even consider it. It's a developer so maybe they'd like to get it sold.

I really don't understand what element of the original post is constructive or helpful. Speaking negatively in in a global way is useless, and frustrating to people on here that are trying to sell their homes.

I still believe that a home that is appropriately priced for the market and attractive will sell- I just bought last week in MA, and I have several friends who are also looking.

"I really don't understand what element of the original post is constructive or helpful."

Sometimes the best way to generate lots of responses (and thus test the accuracy of a sentiment) is to state it in a way designed to be contradicted.

If he got lots of agreement it would be revealing too.

I agree with other posters. It seems as though the market is picking back up. I guess all the gloom and doom didn't scare everyone. You really can't make predictions about the future. Life is unpredictable!

"I really don't understand what element of the original post is constructive or helpful. Speaking negatively in in a global way is useless, and frustrating to people on here that are trying to sell their homes.

I still believe that a home that is appropriately priced for the market and attractive will sell- I just bought last week in MA, and I have several friends who are also looking."

Good post

Whilke i am certain there are areas where the buyers are out there purchasing homes, existing home inventory suggests otherwise.From a personal vantage point,the buyers in the PA/NJ/NY area have disappeared.Sure, homes are selling, but many,many others barely get a walk thru..Others say if priced right, the home will sell..True enough, but what is the right price? 20% lower,25% lower? I laugh when i hear "priced right", sure i could sell any home if i price it significantly under comps, but why would anyone do that, unless they truly had to sell..

While mortgage applications have increased lately strangely foreclosures have skyrocketed. You usually don't see rising sales and rising foreclosures.

The mortgage application index is only 50% of the market, mainly big banks and thrifts. Recently, on the private side there have been several large subprime mortgage companies go out of business (like Sebring and OWNIT) so one possibility is that the mortgage application is showing the increased market share that the people covered by the index are getting. The Mortgage Bankers Association also released its third quarter delinquency report showing rising delinquencies. And DQ News released its much watched Southern California report today showing a the lowest home sales in 9 years for November.

{{!gwi}}

I agree with the posters that have said if it is dry area for sales pricing isn't the problem. It appears the problem is buyers want to offer much less than asking based on them thinking they are getting a deal (instead of checking comps) thus maybe we sellers should have priced high to give buyers more room for negotation ?????

Thanks for the words of encouragement qdog, jy_md and minet. :)

We didn't do anything extraordinary, we were just trying to elimiane ANYTHING (well, within our power, can't do much about that sloped lot) that a potential buyer might see as a negative.

We had three bedrooms and a buddy bath repainted, all were done in Duron "Sandy Lane". We had the kitchen wallpaper border (and matching window treatments) removed and then that room was repainted with Duron "Tobacco Road". (I was SO WORRIED about this, that it would be too dark but with the white cabinets and Corian it looks amazing.) We had three trees taken down in the front yard, because they were overgrown and blocking the view of and the light from the front of the house. We had fill dirt brought in and put under the deck and then wash gravel laid on top of that. We had the siding power washed and the gutters cleaned out and washed. We had all the exterior windows and dormers painted and the front shutters painted as well. We had the garage floor power washed and painted. We replaced the mailbox (actually our new Realtor did this for us). We are replacing all the light fixtures on the main and upper levels. We are having the diveway leveled and resurfaced. The hardwood floors are being sanded and refinished (that started today) and then the carpets will be steam cleaned. Then the whole house will be professionally cleaned.

There were a few other minor touch ups but those are the major things. I wanted to do a lot of them before we originally listed but was discouraged by the other Realtors. Bad advice.

I don't even want to think about the final bill for all of this but if it gets the house sold quickly this time, I promise not to complain for one minute!

"I agree with the posters that have said if it is dry area for sales pricing isn't the problem. It appears the problem is buyers want to offer much less than asking based on them thinking they are getting a deal (instead of checking comps) thus maybe we sellers should have priced high to give buyers more room for negotation ?????"

It's perfectly understandable that buyers would test the market to see how low it can go Wouldn't you do that if you were a buyer? Besides, prices shot up so quickly in a lot of areas that many buyers were shut out of the market. Now those buyers are offering as much as they can afford, hoping to get houses that were previously out of their price range because the seller is desperate. I see a lot of that going on in some of the stories told on this forum recently. It probably works sometimes.

Rates have gone down and if that continues, most areas will probably see more buyers. But I still think it will take a while to whittle down the huge inventories out there now.

What do sellers and realtors think "room for negotiation" is in terms of say a percentage? We keep seeing sellers add on 10 to 20 percent from last years pricing and then slowly, if at all start to drop down in pricing. I am thinking 5 percent is room for negotiation - what do you all think? We just looked at a house that was priced 20% higher than the highest comp the listing agent compared it to. Yesterday after 6 months on the market and no offers, they dropped the price 2 percent. This is the kind of thing that I don't understand as a buyer. Unless I am really watching the listing I would not even notice such a small price reduction...

I think that some sellers, when considering whether to drop prices, think in terms of "real money" not percentage of house price. For instance, on a house price of $300k, if the seller is advised to drop the price 10%, the seller thinks, "That's $30k out of my pocket! I don't want to do that!"

Because that's what it comes down to - for the agent, for the buyer, for anyone else, it's just a percentage number. For the seller, it's an actual amount of money they will not receive. So that can be scary, even if it's what needs to happen.

Maybe the house was listed at 20% more because it had high-end finishes, remodeling, etc. that the other "comparable" houses didn't have. Comps are just computer data based on simple things such as sq footage, lot size, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, etc. but don't take into consideration that House A has a fabulous remodeled kitchen and wonderful baths and hardwood floors, while House B has an older kitchen, standard baths and carpet. Good inside-the-house appraisals will take those upgrades into consideration, but comps don't. So they're not always absolute numbers to go by.

Trying2buy: Yesterday after 6 months on the market and no offers, they dropped the price 2 percent. This is the kind of thing that I don't understand as a buyer.

Maybe they are in denial, unaware of current market conditions in your area or truly cannot afford to take much less then they listed for? As a buyer, you do not care what they "need", you care what a property is worth. The seller obviously cares a great deal about how much money they need to make (or need to break even) on the sale.

I think some of my neighbors are in denial, or they think their houses on the market age like fine wine.
No offense, but I'm sick and tired of looking at the same for sale signs up for a year or more.

Someone I work with has had his house on the market for two and a half years. He has dropped the price I don't know how many time, always keeping it a bit too high in a declining market. Recently, he hired his sister to be his realtor. She advised dropping the price to just below 300K to attract more buyers, but he insisted on setting it at 310K "to leave room for negotiation." Predictably, it continued to languish on the market.

I just heard that he's dropping the price to 299K.

feedingfrenzy wrote: She advised dropping the price to just below 300K to attract more buyers, but he insisted on setting it at 310K "to leave room for negotiation." Predictably, it continued to languish on the market.
I just heard that he's dropping the price to 299K.

Have you ever seen this house? I would guess that something other than an 11K price difference is keeping it from selling!

In the NoVA area, buyers are writing offers 10K-50K under list price and asking for all kinds of incentives as well. No serious buyer (in this area anyway) would hestitate to make on offer on a house that they liked and wanted that was "only" 11K above their target price.

The "only" $11K represents a crossover into a different psychological territory, ie; under $300K. Thus, it may be hoped that buyers whose ceiling is that figure are now drawn towards the home whereas their previous searches did not even spot it.

Of course, as mentioned elsewhere and often, pricing is a black art and hardly a science or yields predictable results. If that was so then computers could do it. UNFORTUNATELY!! Some realtors insists on being lazy and doing exactly that. Run the comps, compare square footage, boom boom you're done. For this we need to pay 3%?

We are planning on marketing our home in the spring. So we asked our realtor to show us some similar homes. One home we went to had a busy road in the back yard, only 50 feet away. The advertised "home theater" in the basement was a sort-of finished room with a 27" tv and dvd player. Suspended ceilings in the basement were barely-code at 7.5 feet high. The master was minuscule and could easily be mistaken for a secondary bedroom but for the ceiling vault. All this on 1/3 acre.

Our home... $20K home theater with 110" projection screen and 7 speaker in-wall wiring and numerous features, additional nicely finished 800 square feet in bmt, 9' ceilings, respectably-sized master with additional sitting room, backyard goes on forever with an active (and attractive) creek, on 1 acre and closer in to town. Two years newer to boot. And he thinks we should price our home accordingly. Why? His main point, ignoring all other evidence, was that they were both built by the same large regional builder, are pretty close in overall square footage (on the two main floors) and in the same suburb. (I should mention that they are at least seven miles apart.)

OK... another home, in our own neighborhood. Much smaller yard that looks onto other homes, comparable square footage, same builder, same age. DARK as all git (we have loads of natural light) original appliances and kitchen (we recently finished a $15K renovation), dungeon for a basement, dog poop on carpeting everwhere (yes, no kidding), and in worse shape with no maintenance been done over 10+ years. (We are in the process of spending an additional $5K in paint and minor repairs). That home just sold for only $9K less than asking (meaning it was probably priced correctly, but in this slow winter market). He thinks that, come spring, we should price no more than $10K higher than its listing price. EH?

Yes, Laura, but aren't homes in your area selling for substantially more than $300K? Thus an $11,000 reduction is peanuts for a house listed at $800K but actually is almost a 4% reduction for a house at $310K.

I have a feeling that by listing at $310K the coworker missed out on all those buyers who told their agents they only wanted to see homes "up to $300K." This did happen to a friend of mine who was selling a loft. No nibbles at all, so she kept dropping the price little by little into the low $300Ks. The week she dropped it to $299K she got multiple offers.

sully6 wrote: Yes, Laura, but aren't homes in your area selling for substantially more than $300K? Thus an $11,000 reduction is peanuts for a house listed at $800K but actually is almost a 4% reduction for a house at $310K.

You're right, of course. There are no homes even listed on the MLS in my zip for under 550K and only five for under 650K. It's percentage that counts.

Still I know that when I was looking at POHs I looked at houses waaaay over my price range (online, I did not initially take up sellers' time with appointments) just to see what was out there. It's just hard to believe that a buyer would not even make an offer if the price difference was only 10K.

It's not the house. It's the market -- SE Michigan. Very difficult to sell a house now, although it wasn't so bad back in 2004 when this house first went on the market -- at too high a price. I should know, since we sold ours that year.

But my real point isn't this particular house (a good-sized brick house that's about 7 years old in a poplular area), but the concept that the seller should deliberately inflate the price "to leave room for negotiation." I don't know whether this is a good approach in a seller's market, but it strikes me as a prescription for failure in a buyer's marekt.

What a seller wants above all in a down market is an offer. If the seller deliberately overprices the house "to leave room for negotiation," then s/he's that much less likely to get any offers of any kind. If it's priced at or close to what it's likely to sell for (and I realize this isn't always that easy to figure out), then the liklihood of an offer increases. An offer made can always be turned down or countered if the seller thinks it's too low, but no offer at all leaves nothing to "negotiate."

This all seems like plain common sense to me. That's way I'm so amazed when I read statements like "thus maybe we sellers should have priced high to give buyers more room for negotation ?????"

Buyers always want to negotiate. It is ingrained in the process and the mentality. (When I put on my buyer's hat I think the same way, so am not necessarily fingering others, just pointing out human nature). In a seller's market they just get away with it less.

So I see the logic in wanting to leave a little room for negotiation. How much is the right amount is where both buyers and sellers run into difficulty. This is where a competent, hard working AND honest realtor is needed, but I am beginning to wonder if I just described a mythical beast.

feeding frenzy wrote: If the seller deliberately overprices the house "to leave room for negotiation," then s/he's that much less likely to get any offers of any kind.

I think there is a difference between "overpricing" and range pricing. After all, there is no magic number at which any one house should be priced. It really is a range, so if you price at the higher end of the range you have some negotiating room before you hit your bottom line; at the low end, not so much. A seller can always counter offer with a number that is higher than the offer but not exactly at list (countering at list makes him seen stubborn and unwilling to "deal") but he cannot go *over list on the counter, not without being called crazy and effectively ending all negotiations!

herus wrote: This is where a competent, hard working AND honest realtor is needed, but I am beginning to wonder if I just described a mythical beast.

No, such a Realtor exists and I have him right here in NoVA. Kicking myself for not listing with him initially.
I can almost guarantee my house would have sold already.

herus

Based on our experience selling our house, I would get a different realtor. The first realtor we interviewed brought back comps that were obviously not comparables to our large house on five acres. On that basis, she recommended an asking price that was about 40K less than our house ultimately sold for. I'm sure she could have sold it more quickly than the seven months it took with the realtor we hired, one who worked hard to find the right buyer, but we would have been that much poorer!

I stand by my statement that a lower asking price is more likely to generate an offer, especially in a down market. Pricing it at the high end of what the seller thinks it's worth means you're that much less likely to get an offer. Period.

Of course, some sellers don't need to price as low as possible because they don't have an acute need to sell quickly. It may make sense for them to price at the high end of the range in anticipation of playing negotiating games with hypothetical buyers. So I guess each seller has to decide which is more important -- a quick sale, or a top-dollar price, always remembering, of course, that a top-dollar price in a down market is lower than in a good market.

When the market's seriously down, you're highly unlikely to get both.

The psychology works both ways. The offer we just put in we made at a flat $300k (on a $309,900 listing) rather than $299,900, so the seller could say, "Yep, got $300 thousand dollars for the house" rather than, "Got just under $300 thousand." Sounds better for the seller and we wanted him to like the offer.

Hi everybody. I'm new here. We've had our house on the market since the beginning of October (we took it off for two weeks at the end of November), with lots of lookers, but no offers yet. The thing is, everybody that has looked at it, had nothing but good things to say. We haven't heard one person say it's priced too high either. This is why I can't understand why we haven't had one offer. I know it's a buyers market, so I figured we would have gotten at least a lowball offer by now. We did have a young couple very interested. They looked at it twice (with their parents, both times), and we were told they were going to make an offer, but none came. There is really not much that needs to be done to our house, because in the last 4 years we have done a ton of work to it. We are including all the appliances (the oldes being the dishwasher at 5 years). The washer and dryer are brand new this year. We even had a weekend sale where we reduced the price by $10,000 and included the 51" HDTV, Lawn mower (new), and snowblower. We're also offering a $1000 to any buying agent that has it under contract by the end of December. But so far none of that has worked. I guess we'll have to wait it out.

feedingfrenzy wrote: I stand by my statement that a lower asking price is more likely to generate an offer, especially in a down market. Pricing it at the high end of what the seller thinks it's worth means you're that much less likely to get an offer. Period.

What the seller thinks it's worth? LOL! I think my house is worth a LOT more than I'm asking!!
Comps are what counts....not what the seller, or even the Realtor thinks, you yourself just said this!

A seller may get more offers if they price lower but I guarantee they will not be list or even close...at least not in my area...and as I said before, the seller cannot go above list in his counters once the list price is set.

In our case we will list at $829,900 but will not accept a final offer much under $800K.

Minet--Good Luck with your offer!! Fingers crossed that the seller accepts!!!

Oh c'mon, Laura! "What the seller thinks it's worth" ceretainly should be based on the best info available, as I said in the very same post.

Is it really neccessary to restate the obvious in each and every sentence?

The flip side of "the list price can't be raised during negotiation" is that you can't negotiate at all if there are no offers

My MIL just sold her house, nice area of San Francisco CA, for $1.022M. Now, based on the fact that her neighbor's house wasn't as nice, or as well maintained, or as beautifully staged, but it sold 2 months earlier for $1.030M, our asking of $1.039M seemed justified. However, the market in this mid-range is cooling down, not dropping precipitously but gradually slowing. So, we negotiated with a buyer who offered $1.005M as an opener, and compromised at $1.022M. Everybody was satisfied, and we gave a bonus to our full service agent, who did a TERRIFIC job for us. My MIL was very sad at leaving her home of 40 yrs, plus we had to get rid of virtually everything in less than a month in order to get the house on the market ASAP. The agent made everything very easy for us and her; it was a textbook case of when paying full service really is worthwhile.

My nephew and his fiancee just bought a 3/2 house nearby for $869K. He owns 3 houses under an LLC in partnership with his sister and father, and his fiancee owns a condo in San Francisco that they will rent out instead of selling. She's only owned it for a year so there's no point in selling it. She wouldn't get enough to offset the selling costs, and the rental market is booming in our area because there are seldom enough good units to satisfy the many people who rent, either because they can't afford to buy or just don't wish/need to become homeowners. Both of them are 28 yrs old with very good paying jobs, needless to say.

Two of the homes were bought as fixers as the LLC (which now includes my nephew's fiancee) puts their own sweat equity into the remodeling. It is astonishing how many people fail to maintain their homes properly, or will not make any effort to make the house presentable and clean for potential buyers.

There is very little 'bubble' in the SF Bay Area, because of the limited amount of land and how difficult residents make it for those small lots that are available for development. Sales may slow, but in desirable areas with a good job economy, sales will still happen even if prices drop. In fact, price declines ensure those who are 'on the fence' will try to jump back in and make an offer on something good!

jkom51, I agree SF is an area that will keep its value, there is very limited supply, no way to build out. I co-own a triplex there. Only thing I hate is rent control. But high income jobs are there to stay, even with the dot-com fizzle, it did well. Sales are slow, but prices will not plummet.

Dave_in _ jersey wrote: Hi everybody. I'm new here. We've had our house on the market since the beginning of October (we took it off for two weeks at the end of November), with lots of lookers, but no offers yet.

Hi, Dave and welcome to this Forum. :)

I can totally relate to your situation, we had our house in NoVA listed from April to Oct with lots of showings and seeming but just one real (lowball) offer. We lowered the price over 100K from the original list price and tried a buyer's agent incentive (5K) too. Nothing worked, inventory was huge and the market was dead in our price range.

Our listing expired and now the house has been off the market for ~6 weeks. We have a new Realtor who is wonderful and we are almost done with his list of improvements. We hope to relist next week.

I've heard from many sources that our market has picked up in just the past few weeks. I do know that the inventory in my zip is down to ~84 homes, where as it was ~135 when we took our house off the market in Oct.

Are you using a Realtor? If so I hope that s/he is following up with the interested buyers such as that young couple.

Good luck with your sale!!!! May the New Year bring us all great offers!

laura1202, yes we are using an agent, and she is doing a great job. She has followed up with everybody that has seen the house.

Woke up today to find the house across the street for sale this morning for $60,000 less then we are asking. WTH is up with that. I know they just want to get rid of it, but it's gonna kill us. We knew it was going on the market, but we didn't know what the asking price would be. The woman that lived there passed away, and her family just wants to get rid of it. It's 400 SF less then ours, and the lot is smaller. We figured they would list it around $319,000. They would have no problem getting that.

Woke up today to find the house across the street for sale this morning for $60,000 less then we are asking. WTH is up with that. I know they just want to get rid of it, but it's gonna kill us. We knew it was going on the market, but we didn't know what the asking price would be. The woman that lived there passed away, and her family just wants to get rid of it. It's 400 SF less then ours, and the lot is smaller. We figured they would list it around $319,000. They would have no problem getting that.

I'm not sure you really need to worry about this house. What's the condition of the interior? If the former resident was elderly and couldn't maintain her house, it may need quite of bit of work. This, along with the smaller size and lot, could explain the price difference.

When we sold our townhouse, our neighborhood had the oddest price structure. The inside units all sold in 2006 for 350K, but all the outside units all sold in 2006 for 340K. The outside units are all larger with larger lots. I think a lot of buyers were puzzled by this (I would be) asking why the inside units had higher comps. The sold amounts aren't rational and they make no sense but that's just how things are in the neighborhood.

jy_md, the house is in pretty good shape. The woman who lived there took pretty good care of it. The last owner of our house expended the kitchen, and turned the garage into the family room. Neither was done in the other house.

Dave: Are you saying that the house across the street doesn't have a garage, and yours does?

Sweet_tea, the way I understand it, Dave does not have a garage but the other house does. Didn't another thread somewhere say that no garage was a negative, even if the house gained more interior space? Is there a replacement garage?
FWIW, I see lots of houses with converted garages in my area, but I don't know how the housing values were affected.

no, I'm saying our garage was turned into a family room, and they still have a garage. Our kitchen was expanded and theirs was not. We also have a sunroom and a 3 level deck they don't. Like I said, ours is more updated than that house, but buyers won't know until they look at both houses.

Oh c'mon, Laura! "What the seller thinks it's worth" ceretainly should be based on the best info available, as I said in the very same post.

Is it really neccessary to restate the obvious in each and every sentence?

The flip side of "the list price can't be raised during negotiation" is that you can't negotiate at all if there are no offers

Something's wrong with this forum. It reposted a message I posted on the 14th and didn't post a different message I just tried to post.