There was a 12.27 acre parcel of land for sale to the southern-most tip of my town, Coal City, IL.  Instead of listing with one of the local real estate professionals the sellers opted for a company that sells primarily land and commercial developments. I can dig that...makes enough sense from a fundamental standpoint to use a company with expertise in that area.

The lot went up for sale at $920,250 on 8/16/07. Now many of my readers are from around North America- so take my opinion that I thought that price at $75,000 per acre was a little high.

Need proof? It closed two days ago in a cash deal (342 days on the market) at, get this, $275,000!!!

WOW- even I didn't see that coming!

So this brings up a couple of things for me. The first and most obvious is- 'wow, this market's so bad that people will possibly unload at any price'. But the bigger issue to me as a REALTOR is how does the agent/ company go about their business from here on? They're "experts" in this type of property so much that the sellers didn't consider a local professional. Yet at the end of the day they took a year to sell a property at 29.9% of its original list price.

*Could you, as a REALTOR, imagine working that into a marketing presentation? "Well, it'll take a year and I'll get you a little less than a third of what I'm putting it on the market at. Sound fair? Sign here, here and here."

*Could you as a seller look at this and be happy or proud in your decision? I hope so because the same guys have a pair listed for $399,000 and $6,375,950 right now. The 6 million dollar parcell is at the same development as the referenced property. If it sells for the same dollar per acre- the sellers will be moving it at about 2 million dollars less than asking.

I certainly do not envy the lady or gentleman that has to price in this type of category in this market as a screw up too low can cause your clients tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars and a screw up too high can have you sitting around for a year and selling at a third of list. Not fun!