A Pacifier for "Anxious Sellers"
From the Sacramento Bee:
The silence was a long one, nearly an hour without a soul at the door in that elaborate weekend ritual called the Open House. Inside the Folsom home, real estate agent Susanne Wolter breathed the sigh of an entire industry coping this summer with more sellers than buyers. "You have to be patient and stick it out," she says...
Open houses, on the wane during a housing boom of numerous offers and sales too quick to stage them, are back in vogue -- and multiplying -- as sales have slowed and days on the market keep climbing...But many real estate agents say opening the door for a few hours on the weekend isn't the rage because it helps that much in selling a home. It doesn't. Rather, open houses are increasingly a tool to pacify anxious sellers who want to see the agents doing something -- anything -- to sell the home. And the agents themselves are willing to go along as a way to troll for scarce buyers to represent...
Whatever the reason, that peculiar institution that lets people visit the homes of others to gawk, get decorating ideas and occasionally fall in love with the place and buy it is on a roll in the capital region. "There are gazillions of them," says Leigh Rutledge, president of the Sacramento Association of Realtors.
6 comments:
Thanks again to Ali for the link.
Anytime.
It’s amazing these real estate agents still expect their listings to get bites within a specific time frame. Meaning several days or in a week after being listed. It’s not going to happen. I remember in the 90s, when the market was normal and open houses were common. In my opinion most RE agents have lost touch with what it takes to actually sell in harsh times. Or maybe these RE agents jumped on the bandwagon during the boom and have no idea what so ever how to market, present and sell what will be the largest single purchase most persons will make in their lives. I see more and more ads in the local newspaper for agent positions. Wonder why, maybe because all the inexperienced Agents are jumping ship?
Maybe anxious sellers should be wanting to see some frantic action. Just popping the house into the MLS doesn't accomplish a whole lot these days.
A now-former friend bought "income property" in West Sacramento at the peak of the market in spring '05. I tried to warn him and directed him to what bubble info existed at the time. He swaggered around announcing that it didn't matter if housing values tanked or that he had to lose money on rent every month -- he was IN THE MARKET and on his way to wealth.
Now that he's trying to sell the money-losing rental at a loss, he's still bragging about how great his financial advisor is. She's an insurance agent who sold him a ton of whole-life insurance as part of a Missed Fortune concept. That's right -- life insurance with lapsed-based pricing, $0 surrender value for over a decade, and all the stuff consumer protection sites warn about. Since I was right about property, will he listen to me about the life insurance? Nope.
The bubble was fed by people who genuinely wanted to be scammed.
Known as the "bigger fool" theory. A friend of mine bought property in the last bubble market in the late 80's under the idea that it could be cash flow negative because it was going up 25% per year (indefinitely, of course). Years later it was sold at a loss.
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