I attended a class taught by and agent that sells throughout Florida. He was a very powerful speaker and knew his numbers very well. His thinking is it is in all of ours seller's best interest to reduce their prices to a fire sale and if you sell a house to a buyer you are doing them wrong because pricing are going to continue to dro
p until they reach 2001 prices. We should tell all of our buyers to rent not buy. He went on to say that 98% of real estate agents are unprofessional because they do not know their numbers. His reasoning for the 2001 pricing is because in Lee County there are currently 22,529 homes for sale. This month we had the same ratio of sales to listings as 2002 but with the inventory much higher we still have many more years of a declining market. He went on to say there are currently slightly less homes coming on the market then leaving the market. It is basic economics that if supply is higher than demand then prices will continue to drop. He made examples that short sales and foreclosures will drastically drive the housing market down because as they sell they will set the new market base for homes. He said since 98% of agents do not know these statistics they cannot properly inform their clients and therefore are unprofessional.
For the agents that sat through the whole class there was a lot of anger and fear. Some were even second guessing staying in the business.
My questions were this, In my market "Shadow Wood" there are 1400 totals homes, no short sales, no foreclosures, prices range from $500,000 to $3,000,000. There are currently 85 homes for sale in Shadow Wood. In the last month 10 different homes were pending or sold and 12 either terminated, expired or withdrawn. There were 8 new listings on the market. So that makes 14 more homes leaving the market then coming on. With an inventory of 85 inventories should cycle through in 6.07 months. Now Shadow Wood isn't the only community with these kinds of numbers. Pelican Landing, Bonita Bay, Vasari and a few similar communities in the area.
His response was that the other communities reducing and reducing will also severely affect all markets no matter what their numbers and price ranges.
My opinion is you cannot generalize a whole housing market. Being a fisherman it's like saying fishing on average in Florida is way down so fishing must be bad everywhere. There are always good markets in real estate and even in every so called "bad" neighborhood there are always good deals to be had.
My opinion is that real estate agents like this one are the ones killing the market. Human nature is that they will remember the negative much longer then the positive so it takes many more positive agents to counter what agents like this one is doing to the market place. In some communities he is very right, prices will continue to decline however some have bottomed out and it is time to buy again in these communities.
It is our jobs as real estate agents to maximize our client's investment. Our businesses cannot be money driven we have to look out for the best interest of each of our clients. While it may be best for some to reduce and sell while they can in many cases this is untrue. We have to look at each home on an individual basis and see how we can get them the most from their investment.
It seems like many agents see this as an opportunity to put panic into sellers and get them to sell off fast. While agents can make a lot of money by convincing sellers to sell fast they will kill their reputation and fizzle out in a few years.
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