Geez!  What a trip getting an offer these days!  There is no sense of urgency in writing or countering.  Buyers write low offers and inch themselves up or walk away.  It takes days to get a counter and no body wants to put anything in writing ( probably so they are free to go bid on another home while they wait for your seller to mull over this low offer, afraid that it may be along time until they get another one!) .  I haven't seen too many buyers these days that you actually got the feeling that they absolutely LOVE the house......not that every buyer told me that before some still wanted to play it cool.  But a realtor almost knew he had found his buyer the right home..........today, the buyers are trying to make houses work in order to get a deal.  They don't seem to have the emotional attachment to any homes they want to see! ( sometimes I'm actually thinking...why would they want to see THIS home......it doesn't meet any criteria they've ever talked about!) Yet, because there are so few buyers in comparison to our inventories, you're afraid to cut them loose because you have a prequal letter in hand or their house is on the market.......even if it maybe months down the road to a sale, they want to sell. 

All this only adds to frustrating the realtor who is trying to do a good job and still not be taken advantage of......sellers have a lot of stress in getting their homes sold, but I hope they know we have alot of additional stress trying to coax buyers to write realistic offers and perform in a reasonable time period.  There just isn't a lot of urgency or emotional attachment to getting that HOME any more, it seems people are just buying houses. 

I can't count how many offers that went nowhere or buyers who walked away from a good counter.  Really wondering about the buyer loyalty and their ability to zone in on what they truly want!  I really feel for my sellers who are trying to write a counter that will result in a deal......sometimes the figures are just too far apart to ever imagine the banter will result in a sale, and yet they seem to be trying to bend over backwards to accommodate even crummy offers!

Boy I hope this can turn around soon!