When I meet with prospective customers looking for a 55 or older community and talk about them buying their next home many say the same things, "I think I am going to wait this out and see what happens" or " I have had my home for almost a year and no one has even looked at it in months". There are three things I see wrong in most cases, PRICE, PRICE, PRICE. In most cases the asking price for the homes they are attempting to sell are too high. When this happens they get frustrated after trying to sell their home for 6-12 months and you end up with a stagnant market.
I ask the people I meet with that are in this situation what the asking price of their home is? After hearing their reply I ask them how much would they take for their home if they had a cash buyer sitting in front of them today willing to write them a check? I am surprised to hear how much lower than the advertised price they would take. Their thinking is that you can always go down however by using this strategy they/you might miss several potential buyers. Most of them realize that after going through all of the stress and disappointment of not selling their home for so long that they have wasted their time and have been unrealistic in their approach. In most all cases when they take the step of lowering the selling price they sell their homes within 10-30 days.
What does this mean? It means that once people have accepted this market correction (and most are willing to if some time is spent talking with someone knowledgable about the market and their approach) there would be no "building crisis". It is absolutely necessary that everyone involved in selling establish a relationship/rapport with their buyers and sellers where they can be frank with them about their expectations in selling their homes instead of allowing them to "hope" the prices will come back.
Granted their home may not bring the price that their neighbors did 2-3 years ago however there are other factors to take into consideration besides the selling price/net proceeds from the sale of their home. Right now many builders/developers have inventory that they do not want to carry through the winter. Realizing this, these same builders/developers are willing to sell their inventory at very reasonable prices. Couple this with the facts that material and labor prices are constantly increasing and that these new homes are much better built (energy efficiency) than the home they purchased 20-30 years ago which means the cost to heat their new home is an immediate and long term substantial savings for them. Another factor to take into consideration is the clients ability to wait 3,5 10 years for the market to come back to where it was 2-3 years ago. In many cases waiting too long makes it very difficult for them to physically make the move.
If they wait too long the cost of buying a new home could supercede the amount of money their home increases in price...if it does appreciate at all. If it does not apprecdaite then they have twice the problem. Their home did not apprecate in price and the new home costs a lot more than it would have if they bought earlier.
The bottom line is that this market can come back strong and quickly with more effort from everyone involved in selling homes talking with the buyers/sellers about selling their home for what it is worth instead of holding out false hopes that something, possibly, maybe or might happen in the future. It all boils down to everyone taking the time to establish that relationship that so many are unwilling/unable to invest their time in...
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