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Don't Sell If You Don't Need To!!

By
Real Estate Agent with Keller Williams Realty

I am not sure how many other agents out there are coming across sellers who say they are motivated, but in reality they are not as motivated as they claim to be. I seem to be getting calls left and right from people who are panic selling because they "do not want to loose any more of their equity"  yet these same sellers who claim they want to sell their homes do not want to price their homes for the current market conditions.

This is a very frustrating scenario to me - and although I am not an economics major -it seems to me that these same panic sellers that say they do not want to loose equity are in fact making the market conditions worse!

Now I am sure that there will be people who will disagree with me - but this is how I came to that conclusion. In Palmdale as of the time that I am writing this blog there are approx. 1818 active residential properties in the MLS. That number does not include the majority of available inventory from the new home developments.

When I searched the MLS to see how many closed sales we have had since 5/1/07 I only found 91 residential properties and another 105 that have been marked as pending. That means that we are only averaging about 3.5 sales a day. Those numbers do not include the majority of the 1195 Pre-foreclosure homes, the 203 homes scheduled for auction in the next 21 days or the 639 REO homes (these numbers are from Realtytrac). 

It seems that the more homes on the market we have, the less buyers we have.  I believe we have less buyers because they see the amount of homes available for sale. Many of the buyers are  thinking that the market will continue to drop so they want to wait to buy.

The people who HAVE to sell must then drop the price on the home even lower. Yet the unmotivated panic seller keeps his house on the market at an unrealistic price, which makes it seem like it is a bad time to buy a home because the market is not  moving.  And then lastely we have the new home builder who does not really lower the price of their home - but entices the buyers to get a brand new home because they will give them $60,000 worth of upgrade and buy down their points! Now how is a re-sale seller supposed to compete with that??

My advice to those people who do not HAVE to sell.  Stay where you are.  If you want or need a bigger home keep your current home and either rent it out of do a lease option.  One of the easiest ways to build wealth is to own real estate.  This is not the best time to sell but it is a GREAT time to buy!  Sellers are motivated,, interest rates are still low - and there is an abundance of inventory to choose from! 

I do not have a crystal ball and I can not predict the future -but the one thing I can count on is that history usually repeats itself.  The California real estate market has been down before and it definitely made a come back. I believe it will come back strong again! 

 

Comments (3)

Kaushik Sirkar
Call Realty, Inc. - Chandler, AZ
The title of your blog post is especially appropriate for the current phoenix metro market.  WAY too many listings...if you don't HAVE to sell, don't put your home on the market...
Jun 04, 2007 08:17 PM
David Lawson - NMLS #252510
Gateway Funding - Yucaipa, CA

Great post. Hopefully thousands will read it.

Dave

Jun 12, 2007 04:40 PM
John Evarts
Classic Property Management of Santa Clarita - Santa Clarita, CA
Amen. The problem with these kinds of posts is that the people who need to hear it won't read it and if they do, they won't get it.
Jun 13, 2007 09:03 AM