As a realtor I speak with sellers every day who ask how to sell their home and what homes are selling in this market. My response MUST include information about the short sale and foreclosure market, and sellers quickly discuss how they’ve cared for their homes and their home is so much nicer than a foreclosure.
Today’s Distressed Properties Are Much Different Than Past Foreclosures
While this will be further explained in a separate post, it’s first important to state that a 2008-2009 foreclosure or short sale looks much different than a foreclosure prior to 2008. Many of these homes have been well-maintained and economic hardships may have resulted in a seller relocating to another state with negative equity in their home, an inability to continue to make the mortgage on a home, etc.
Foreclosures And Short Sales Represent Greater Share Of The Market
The purpose of this blog, however, is to look at what homes are selling and failing to sell in the current Tallahassee area real estate market. To do this, I simply looked at today’s sales and today’s expired listings in our MLS system. What did I find? 8 homes sold in the Tallahassee area and 3 of those sales were of foreclosed properties! WOW! That means for today alone 40% of the sales were foreclosed properties.
What didn’t sell, or expired? 33 homes did not sale and 1 of those was a foreclosed home. Therefore, 97% of the properties that failed to sell were owners who likely think their home does not compare to a foreclosed home. I know, I know, all you statisticians out there are dying because I made a statement with one day of data which means an extremely small sample size, little power, and limited generalizability. True. But cross-sectional data are useful for understanding status quo conditions and are always superior to anecdote or conjecture.
Home Sellers Must Think Like A Bank
Sellers need to think like a bank thinks when trying to sell their home. Banks have no emotion when selling inventory, they price it to sell so that they no longer have to “own” the home. Serious home sellers should try and do the same, rather than watch their values drop while they continue to fail in the market.
So is this one day of data worth anything? To the seller who lays awake at night wondering how/ if they will sell their house, it’s worth everything. In short, it states that the foreclosure and short sale market affects us all.
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Interesting perspective on the Tallahassee real estate market. I agree that sellers need to distance themselves from the emotion of a home and deal with the cold hard facts.
Nice post.
Interesting perspective on the real estate market. I agree that individuals need to get rid of the emotion of selling and deal with the facts. The reality is that negative equity is nearly ubiqutous, and those people with lots of equity typically aren’t the ones moving anyhow.
Good post.
Great post and so true. Many short sale and foreclosure properties are in good condition and are proving to be stiff competition for everyone else. Sellers have to face the hard facts and try to be unemotional when selling their homes.
Good perspective. It’s hard to distance oneself from the emotions wrapped in a home. But you’re right. One needs too.
I’ve got a brother that’s trying to find a home to buy here, and he’s run into the emotional problem with sellers.
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