What About the Buyers!!!

It has become increasingly common for someone to ask me about the market. Six months ago, when I told someone I was a realtor, the usual comment was something along the line of me having an easy job that paid great bucks for doing pretty much nothing. On the outside I was smiling while inside my head was screaming; What about the buyers!!!!!! What about the buyers that are fighting for one listing with tens of other buyers and possibly losing the battle time after time. This is not all about the listing side, we have buyers and finding a home and nailing the offer in the sellers’ market takes skill.  Now, everyone wants to know what I think about the market. I don’t know if my job has ended being the easiest well-paying job, but I no longer get that remark and quite frankly I do prefer the question on the market over the remark.

It’s easy to understand why our current market looks so scary. It does, if you just stare at the graphs without further knowledge. Just look at this figure, the absorption rate has tanked from being around 111% in May to being less than 50% in August. Owie, owie, owie… It does not look pretty. It looks like we're doomed. Somewhere before the panic I try and squeeze in my five cents. My five cents about a healthy market and the absorption rate that is supposed to be somewhere around 25% for a balanced market. Panic isn’t due until the absorption rate falls way under 25% and we are not there yet. Even our inventory is far from what it should be for a healthy market. We are no longer at 2 weeks, the current number is 2 months, and it should be somewhere around 4 to 6 months. But I agree, it does look scary though. It looks scary because we are not used to this. It looks scary because it looks different. As a girl with bright orange hair and bulky black glasses though. I like different. I'm ready for different. 

I told you last week that I enjoy working with buyers. I do. I enjoy working with sellers too, and more than anything I’m delighted to see that we are about to enter a fairer playing field. This is going to be fun. Homes that are priced right and are prepared for sale will sell. Pricing right means pricing according to the market instead of the seller’s wild dreams of making an extra $100K, $200K or $300K. Pricing right means taking a closer look, at what has sold and what is listed and making pricing decisions that will help pull buyers in, instead of pushing them away.

Prepping a home for sale is something people hasn’t been doing for a long time around here. Yes, we have entered a new world where you should take professional photos – by the way, I always do – you should wash the windows, take care of the landscaping and take at least a closer look at that old carpet and walls in need of some fresh paint. It is coming as a surprise to some of our sellers that selling a home takes money. Your home will have to look appealing and welcoming. Have it at least professionally cleaned and staged. Please do. Pretty please! As of now, when I go through listings for my buying clients, I discard 80% of them because the home is not move in ready and I know my clients are not ready for a project. That means I forward two homes out of ten to my clients and the eight remaining homes they never even see because of the old carpeting, the kitchen that is in need of serious help and the bathtub that looks like an incubator of serious illnesses. Most homes I’m ready to discard after the first three photos. As a seller, wouldn’t you want your home to be one out of the two that I forward to my buyers?

Then comes the next step. The one where the buyer finds something they are interested in. As brokers we need to adjust our thinking. Don’t be lazy, just write the offer. What’s the worst that can happen? It gets declined or more likely in this new world market you may get a counter. As brokers we need to pick up our pens and start working again. We need to write smart offers that are appealing to sellers even if they are not full price offers. There are other ways to make an offer appealing. It’s not all about the money, it’s not all about the inspection or the financing contingency. We are back in a market where you get to write an offer that your buyer can live with yet is interesting to the seller. Just write the offer. Make it clean and smart and appealing. Make the seller want to negotiate. That is your job as a broker.

We have become too shy of offering under asking. We have become too cautious to write an offer that doesn’t give the seller everything they may want. We don’t know how to negotiate anymore. I had a broker call me the other day asking if writing an offer would be waste of her time. I wanted to say; write the damn offer, isn’t that your job as a buyer representative. Instead, I replied that I would encourage writing an offer, that I would present their offer to my client – as I am bound to do by law – and would work with my seller to help them see why this offer would be worth starting negotiations. Always, always write the offer if your buyer is ready to buy. Don’t be shy. Don’t be lazy. Never, ever, ever, ever think writing an offer would be a waste of your time.

And if you are the client with that broker whom thinks writing an offer would be waste of time. Find a new broker. Your broker is not doing what they are supposed to do, representing you.