After the Seattle Times posted the article "Let the Buyer Rejoice: Home sales, prices fall" on Oct. 7, I wrote a long blog post. I was pretty steamed by what I was reading. The upshot of the article, as the title would lead you to believe, was that homes sales volumes and prices are down.

Straightforward enough. However, they used one Seller's difficulties as an example to help illustrate the point. The Sellers house was listed at $647,000 at the time the article was written. It is now at $629,950 and still does not appear to have any offers on it. The Seller was frustrated because all the agents he had talked to recommended listing prices in the "high 700's" back in June.  He opted "for a quick sale" to list lower at $729,000 and here he was several months later listed at $647,000 and it still hadn't sold. One week later still, at $629,950, it is still on the market.

Why was I so frustrated? It wasn't the fact that prices and sales were down that had me mad. It was my perceptions of the behavior of the agents.

You can't tell me that the market has dropped $100,000, almost 14% off the $729,000 listing price, since June. It is an even bigger drop if you start in the "high $700s."
 
How could the Seller have listed at a price that has left him sitting on the market for more than 3 months. Surely the Seller had a part in it. But, the Realtors he was talking to must have had a bigger piece in it and I was mad. I wrote up a blog entry calling out what I felt must be disastrous recommendations, over hyping the market,  and many other issues.... but then I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut (mostly).

I opted not to post it.

Instead, I will just point out that this is a really unfortunate event made even worse by the vagaries of an unpredictable market.

So, to the Sellers out there. Do your research. Talk to multiple agents about appropriate listing prices and selling prices. They are not necessarily the same thing. All us agents are looking at very similar comparable sales when we make our recommendations. If one agent's recommendation seems too good to be true it probably is. They may be "buying" the listing. Promising anything the Seller wants to hear knowing that they will later on have to work the listing price down to get a sale.

I am not saying this happened in the example the Times used. This is just the thought I wanted to bring out today with that example in the back ground.

Oh, and my fellow agents... there is a lesson in there for us too! The listing is still on the market and the current agent appears to be the second agent that the Seller has used. I suspect there will be more listing agents before it is sold.

Chris