Still Crazy After all These Years

It may seem like now would be a good time for any seller to just take the money and run. It may seem like any intelligent offer on real estate would be considered a gift and the seller lucky. It may seem that just about everyone gets it by now. Ahhhh.. but all things are still not what they seem. Sellers in general, private or institutional still don’t get it and as a result, inventory is still climbing, prices are still declining and the stalled real estate market has stalled the U.S. economy and taken multi billion dollar corporations as victims in the process.
Private sellers, foreclosing lenders, banks and investors or just about anyone offering a property for sale are still turning down good solid offers. Intelligent, well thought, reasonable offers to purchase are being turned down in droves only to languish longer on the market and eventually lose even more value. 
For some strange reason, it isn’t easy to buy a property today. All things considered you’d think it’s a great time to buy if you’re fortunate enough to. Actually it’s even more difficult to buy a property now and not for any other reason than sellers still don’t get it. Lenders believe that they’ll do better by not discounting that foreclosure anymore in order to get it off the books, off the market and out of the way. Private sellers mostly still believe that thier house hasn’t declined as much as everyone else in the country and so they pass on opportunities as well and they languish and they lose value along with thier property. Or worse they believe that the market will majically go back up as soon as the dust settles. The only realist in the mix is the guy in pre foreclosure who would sell at any price if he could, but his lender just won’t accept it and wants the money or the house so that they can try to sell it, eventually for less than they could net had they accepted a reduced payoff.
If anyone reading this has a different perspective on sellers today I would truly love to hear your comments. It is now almost the end of the first quarter of the new year and inventories are still rising, markets are still declining, sellers are still dreaming. So far this year we have had 6 offers declined by sellers and lenders. Offers made on behalf of clients and for our own portfolios. All six in various states, most here in South Florida. All six are still languishing on the market at current market values below the offers we made. This makes me wonder how many other offers and probable sales are being turned down. If I were to conservatively suppose, 1000 similar situations happening since the beginning of the year, it’s easy to do the math. I’m going to be very bold here and say that sellers in general are as much of an obstacle to overcoming the stalled real estate market as any other market force that we’ve seen and consequently the refusal to accept reality and move on is moving us closer to the feared “R” word than we need to be.

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