The pendulum has swung to the Buyer’s side of the table & then some. We drive down the same streets in Bellingham & Whatcom County & what do we see but “Priced Reduced”, “New Price”, “Re-Visited Price”, “Price Modified” – in fact there was one Realtor that subscribed to the theory if one is good, 2 or more has to be better, so he festooned his sign with multiple “Price Reduced” signs. There are Seller concessions, agent concessions, lender concessions – everybody is willing to give the https://boss45.net/ Buyer something in hopes that he / she will step up & buy. I saw an ad that talked about an attractive Florida divorcee who had her house on the market & couldn’t sell it, so, since she was in the market for a husband anyway, she decided to market herself & the house in a single package – Yankee ingenuity is great but I’m not sure that the general public would find this an acceptable strategy for either buying or selling.
The Buyer still has a dilemma though. Everything that the Buyer hears, reads & sees makes him / her wonder if he buys today will the home be worth less tomorrow. Maybe he should just wait. That philosophy is hard to fault, however a Buyer really needs to analyze the particular market he’s moving to & determine just how speculative this specific area really is. Our oldest son lives in Mountain View, California & tells us there are areas in Stockton, California where home owners are not only leaving their homes by the dark of the moon but leaving their pets as well, often times locked up in the now vacant house. The problem is so widespread that the Humane Society is urging homeowners who are faced with foreclosure to take their animals to an animal shelter rather than leaving them unattended.
Now I’m here to tell you if you are considering a move to one of these areas, the prudent thing for a Buyer may be to wait & see how the market sorts out. Bellingham, Washington & many other areas are something else altogether. While the media paints with a wide brush & you see examples of their embellished articles every day in the morning newspaper, a Buyer certainly needs to be site specific in determining whether to purchase today or to wait