Don’t be a Suffering Seller
July 6, 2009
Post Tags: Bottom Feeders , Rosey Koberlein , Suffering Sellers
Dodgeing The Resale Blues
The Front page of the Arizona Daily Star yesterday carried the article “Sellers also-rans in market for homes They struggle to compete with foreclosures — the king”
I’ll address some of the premises of the article later, but first I want to emphasize what was printed in an aside to the main article. This information was better for Tucson home sellers than the entire article which did many sellers a dis-service in the approach to the topic for headlines vs good solid reporting.
There is no reason for most sellers of Tucson Homes to be also-rans. It isn’t a position cast upon the seller as much as one chosen if they let themselves fall into the also-ran category.
Words of Advise from Rosey Koberlein
It’s a tough market in which to sell a home, but sometimes sellers make it harder on themselves. Here are some seller tips, courtesy of Rosey Koberlein, CEO of Long Realty:
- Don’t assume if you price high, you can always come down once an offer is made. Price too high, and offers won’t get made. Prospective buyers will move on. thinking the seller is unreasonable. “Buyers want to see something competitively priced to give them a reason to make an offer,” Koberlein says.
- The most important time for a home is its first two to three weeks up for sale. That’s when the most potential buyer activity will take place on a listing. “That’s why it really needs to be competitively priced. We have homes right now where we are experiencing multiple offers,” she says. Price the home too high and it will sit on the market, and prospective buyers will assume something is wrong with the property.
- Have your listing agent show you comparable homes on the market. That way, sellers know what they are competing against and can price the property more accurately.
I’ve said these same things over and over here in posts for the past three years. Barbara goes over these three points and others with sellers every time we take a listing. Sometimes they listing.
You don’t have to be a suffering seller as the Arizona Daily Star described sellers in this current Tucson real estate market.
You don’t have to be an “also-ran” either.
I’m not going through this article point by point, you can read it for yourself. I want to address a couple of main suppositions.
Foreclosures are King
This simply isn’t true. The percentage of homes in foreclosure or short sale in Tucson is 16 to 18% of total inventory. This leaves more than 80% of the inventory as re sale or new construction.
Any buyer that needs to move soon can’t wait on foreclosure, short sales processes to work their way through the system. As short sale can take 6 to 8 months to close. Foreclosures can be the same or worse.
It takes time, money and patience to make it through the short sale process as a buyer. The real issue for sellers isn’t that foreclosures are king, it is foreclosures as spoilers. You can read about this tomorrow.
“There are a lot of bottom feeders in town trying to steal property,”
This quote from John Wesley Miller got a lot of negative comments from readers of the Star. It is too bad most are made from emotion and not a knowledge of the market. There are a lot of bottom feeders in the market. What constitutes a “bottom feeder”? What we are running into are those who are making offers $80,00 to $100,000 under market value.
When I say under market value I’m not talking about the inflated market values of the past I’m talking about a comp with current resales.
What Can Sellers Do
To put the three points above in a single sentence. Price just below the market. You will sell quicker and there is a good opportunity for multiple offers. It happens with the short sale market all the time. Those homes are price below market value and multiple offers are common. The #1 biggest mistake sellers make is pricing high with the attitude we can always come down. In 98% of the cases they end up taking less than they would have if the house had been priced for the market at the time of listing.
July 7th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I agree with you!
July 7th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Wonderful advice for sellers-we are having great success out here with most of our homes when sellers follow our advice to list just below the market value. Those that do are finding their homes selling much quicker and for what they are asking or close to it, rather than having it sit forever at a higher price
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