Sellers- No Kidding, We’re In A Downswing.

April 30th, 2007 category: Real Estate News, Real Estate Philosophy, Sellers

Timing is everything in real estate. The good news is, the market will be back. The bad news is that we appear to be in an extended downswing. For those of you that are comfortable and in it for the long haul, you’ll be rewarded. For those of you that need to sell, it’s critical that you be cognizant of the fact that the market is lower, period. As a result, you need to be very discriminating when developing your own comparable analysis- emotions have to be discarded at the beautiful new front door that isn’t going to pay you back. But it may get someone into the house favorably.

Buyers are still going to operate on emotion. The difficulty is in determining what motivates them.

It’s their ball field now, and they are being encouraged to find the home run. Unfortunately, part of the hunt is the price, and they are not going to pay what they feel is “too much”. They are looking at statistics themselves; they are reading the paper. The multi-list service is readily available, and they can come to their own “give or take” conclusions through that venue, or any number of emerging websites. A few years ago, a seller could price it at the highest point, get it, and regret not waiting a few months for a further increase.

If you purchased your home before 2003 or thereabouts, you caught the tail end of the lower pricing..

For example, on the North Fork, which includes Riverhead, Jamesport, Baiting Hollow, Aquebogue, Laurel, Mattituck, Cutchogue, Southold, Greenport, East Marion and Orient, if you purchased a modest ranch in an area of Southold, and it had 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, you’d likely paid in the 289-320k range. At peak, this same ranch may have appraised at 510k (with updating done- 50k deducted from 510k). It is now down to the mid 400’s, with time on the market.

Our experience with buyers has demonstrated that if a home is priced appropriately, competitively with all that are available in that range, you’ve got a great start. While staging is emerging, it will continue to do so. In order to keep your home at the top of homes available in your range (example: one standard ranch, redone- 420k: new kitchen cabinets, an updated bath, new paint, roof, furnace; another ranch, not redone:400k- a loss of your updating investment ) staging demonstrates professionalism in presentation.
Home builders know this. Buyers love the model homes- minimalism. It may be worth it to to spend a few hundred dollars to investigate it and get direction.

Another huge presence? The Internet. Homes are being shown now at numerous venues with the advent of such ingenious sites as Zillow, Trulia and Craigslist, among many others. In the numbers game of real estate, this kind of exposure has become as necessary as all other exposure. You’ve read the reports- some 80% of real estate buyers check out the Internet first.

Another aspect that comes into play is presentation of your home to buyers. Getting buyers focused on the things that they’ve deemed important to them- not to me, not to you.

You need correct pricing, Internet presence to bring it to the top of the heap, a professional opinion on the impression of the home (a staging consultation ), and exceptionally strong human presentation. It’s that kind of market.

Next blog: Waterfront Properties: Exempt From the Market Woes?

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Real Estate News, Real Estate Philosophy, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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