Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Real Estate Crunch, 2006


Well, the market isn’t what it was a few years ago. A softer market is here and some sellers are in for a long hall while waiting for their homes to sell. Don’t get me wrong. Things are still selling, but with the softer market and an extremely high inventory of homes for sale, sellers have to be competitive in their pricing. Sometimes price alone, will not help sell a place. There are still the general rules to consider: location, location, location and then the need to buy and then the price.

With the high inventory of homes for sale, buyers have a lot more to choose from and often at discounted prices, to the disadvantage of many sellers. In most cases, a seller has to take a bite on their asking price when an offer is made. Buyers are shopping around for the best deal these days. If their price isn’t accepted on one deal, they can simply go down the road and make an offer on another place. Sellers are often seeing a "take it of leave it" approach when offers are made.

Here in northern Mid Michigan (Gladwin and Clare Counties), we are seeing this pattern quite a bit. Sellers are taking anywhere from an 8 to 14 percent hit on their original asking price. In my area, sellers are getting approximately 89% of their original asking price, with the average days on market being 203 day. This takes into account both waterfront and off water homes, with waterfront properties tending to sell much faster than off water homes.

To see graphs and reports, please click here to view this entire article.

No comments: