I had an agent call this morning about one of my listings. I faced the standard question. Other agent- “What will the seller take?……”. In my head I am think – “Really??? “ I am not answering this question. I never do. Then a secondary question “what comps did you use”. Really again in my head. This is your job. But I politely replied and gave the agent some ideas as to why the home was priced as it was.
It looked like this agent may write an offer. So I wanted to know a little about the level of experience. I looked up the agent and they had three years in the business with about 5 deal a year. Pretty much a newbie. But I will leave that for another blog.
This interaction go me thinking about how the market is changing from a “Sellers Market” to pretty much flat, or a level playing field. Previously my answer to the “What will the sellers take?” questions, has often been a snarky reply. I don’t like that question to begin with, as it implies that I might say something that would be less than ethical and undermine my sellers position. My previous answer has been something like this. “Maybe they will take the list price unless we get multiple offers. Then you will be competing with another offer, and what the seller will take is no longer relevant.” While this Be a little snarky. It was also often accurate than their first question. Price has been more determined by bidding wars that a seller’s willingness to negotiate. They were asking the wrong question.
So as I field this call, I realize that I don’t have multiple offers, and one week into the listing I may not get multiple offers at least at the same time. If multiple offers are not in this properties future then “what will the seller take IS the right question?” Which of course I still won’t answer, but that beside the point.
However, my realization is that we are headed into a normal or flat market. What is different about this type of normal market. Well for starters home don’t sell in day with multiple offers all of the time. If fact the most important difference is that even good quality homes might take 30-60 days to sell. I remember slower markets where I had a quality listing that still still took 60 days because of a slower market. I knew that a price reduction was not necessary because we were the best home on the market in its category and when the next buyer came along we would be the home of choice and we would sell. We just had to be patient.
From a buyers perspective, I was thinking about how nice it would be to take a buyer out, show them a home. Or even several nice homes. They might even have the option of taking some time to think. Maybe they wouldn’t have to complete against other offers and deal with that stress or a bidding war, or the disappoint of ultimately loosing out on their dream home.
The market is changing, yet I still find agents or sellers wondering, well it’s been on the market for 10 days and not sold, what’s wrong? The answer is nothing is wrong. We are just entering a new normal. A market where even good homes may take time to sell.