• Home
• Buy
• Sell
• Statistics
• Neighborhoods
• Loans
• Search Tucson MLS
• About Tucson
• Blog

Here’s the thing…

May 27, 2008

Your home’s value isn’t determined - not even remotely - by the amount of money you want out of it.

Let me back up a second here.  I’ve got a couple of excellent buyers, pre-qualed, solid borrowers, solid buyers.  So we find what seems like a perfect candidate home and make an offer.

Except the Sellers have listed their home with one of those places that just puts the house into MLS for a fee.  And that’s fine, I’m down with that, I’ll negotiate directly with the Seller, no problem.  But they’ve never sold a home in an escrow state, they’re using to having lawyers do all the work.  They also don’t know how to interpret an FHA offer, or have any clue what the Ameridream program is all about.

You can’t blame them for that; unless you deal with this stuff every day, how could you possibly know the nuances of those programs?  I can explain those things, but I’m not allowed to give them advice.  Kind of a fine line to walk when you’re sitting in front of someone asking you a bunch of questions about what is best or what something means.

It also means - in this case - that they’re pricing their home based on what they want out of it, and not on what the house is worth.  I know this because they were very surprised to learn what nearly the same house sold for 2 months ago.  To learn that the price they want is $20k more than what that other house sold for.  Because they didn’t realize that other seller paid 6% in closing costs and assistance to their Buyer. 

But me and my Buyers knew. 

And even presented with that fact, they’re still clinging to their $20k-over-the-last-recent-sold price, because they want more money out of the house.  Which brings me back to where we started this post.  That your house’s value is never dependent on what you want out of it.

So we’ll keep shopping.  Maybe they’ll come around someday.  I heard they got another offer and rejected it while considering my Buyer’s offer.  How many offers do you suppose it takes to finally learn your house isn’t worth what you think it is?

Other Information That Might Be Helpful

• When You Can’t Just Throw Money At The Problem (July 21, 2008)

  Last week, we talked about buying a home with little or no money down.  Here’s another aspect we didn’t cover in that discussion, from a Seller’s perspective.
  Here’s the common scenario: let’s say you just accepted an offer and agreed to pay 3% in down payment and an additional 3% in closing costs to the Buyer.  [...]

• Range Pricing in Tucson - Why? (October 27, 2008)

  Okay. I’ve talked about range pricing before. Admittedly, it isn’t my favorite, because I see it used incorrectly most of the time.
  Range pricing was invented in a rapidly changing market where it was hard to pin down a value, but you knew it was somewhere between X and Y, with market value somewhere in the [...]

• …Whether ‘Tis Nobler to Range Price (August 18, 2007)

  To range price or not to range price, that is the question.
  Earlier this week, Kris Berg of the San Diego Home Blog posted her findings with range pricing (Hi Kris, I’m Kelley).  She says she uses range pricing more often than not, but it is still a debated topic around the Tucson real estate water cooler.  [...]

• Dealing with Kneejerk (January 14, 2009)

  So I submitted a low offer yesterday.
  Well, let me rephrase.  I submitted a reasonable opening offer on an overpriced house yesterday.  When the same house is under contract 2 streets over at $80,000 less…
  Within about 4 hours, I had a rather terse call from the listing agent, saying his clients were not going to respond [...]

• Buying a Tucson Home With Little Or No Money Down (July 15, 2008)

  Speaking of FHA loans… There are still Buyers out there purchasing homes with basically no money down - or very little money, anyway.
  You can do that with an FHA loan - a typical FHA loan is at 97% of value, or 97% LTV.  This means that the Buyer has to come up with [...]

Comments

Copyright © 2008 The Housechick Blog