Team Reba Real Estate

I try to keep up with what’s going on in the market, the NWMLS, and the national real estate scene in a few ways to make sure I keep abreast of changes.  One of the things I’ve watched with interest over the past several months on the MLS is how many new listings are coming on the market daily and comparing that to how many older listings are marking price adjustments (up or down).

Lately it seems that price adjustments for older on market listings are on a downward trend with almost as many price adjustments as new listings on a daily basis; this has been going on for a few weeks.  Today’s numbers include the following as of the writing of this article:

Numbers are down for new listings on the market today most likely due to the upcoming holiday since we’d been seeing numbers in the 600’s for these figures up till this weekend.  I will also mention that these numbers reflect the entire area covered by the NWMLS and fewer than 10% of these were Seattle listings. A large majority of the price drops have been occurring in outlying areas and also in much higher priced homes for those that were within Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland.

Anecdotally, I have noticed that sellers I work with that aren’t hugely motivated, but who still want or need to sell, will price a little high and expect buyers to come in with low-ball offers.  Personally, I’m not a fan of this strategy although I do know some marketplaces where this is a common arrangement - particularly in the mid-west.  Of course, when this happens this same seller will wonder why someone didn’t put an offer in the first week and they’ll start to fret or ask if there isn’t something I can do to change it. 

Hmmmm, let’s see… how about putting the price where it had been recommended to you before we went on market?

Realistically, a home needs at least a couple of weeks to good market exposure to the group of buyers that are in the market at the same time you put your house up for sale. If you are over-priced you run the risk of stigmatizing your home artificially and then after 3-5 weeks the price drops start happening and either agents/people think, “well, it’s about time” but you’ve by this time you’ve likely lost the buyers that were all available at the time you went on market if they’ve already moved on to something else (people who are ready to buy don’t sit and wait and hope your house price drops).

Then it becomes a waiting game.  And, I can tell you, most people/sellers hate the wait.

Very rarely does anyone mention that being a seller is a lot more difficult than being a buyer.  As a seller you’ll worry that if your house doesn’t sell right away that people “think your baby’s ugly” so to speak and you’ve loved your house so much that you can’t imagine that other people wouldn’t love it just as much as you did.  Well, they don’t.  At least not yet.  Or, just the right person that will love it hasn’t happened along - yet.

Much like the dating game, selling a house is all about having the right timing of a buyer and a seller finding each other.  I wrote a similar article about this a long time ago on Rain City Guide where I compared selling a house to dating on Match.com.