Scaring Old Ladies!

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Early Saturday morning, my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was one of my neighborhood’s elders and knew what this call was about. She’s planning to put her house up for sale this spring, and every time the Washington Post runs a state-of-the-market piece, she calls me in a major panic.

“Oh, that Kenneth Harney says the market’s in the toilet, and he really know what he’s talking about, ” she said, and I knew there was some wringing of hands – it was amazing that she could hang onto the phone.

Then yesterday, she called again: “There’s another article in that Washington Post, and it says the market has tanked!” She referred here to Sandra Fleishman’s article in Tuesday’s Business Section.

I read both articles. I clipped both of them to include in my buyer and seller packets – I think both writers did a great job of interpreting what’s happening. Then I tried my interpretation for my friend.

OK, so you can’t expect to get twenty percent more than your place was worth last spring. But your house is still worth a bunch of money.

It will probably take a few weeks, maybe months, to sell it instead of days — meaning I will actually have to do some work to earn my exorbitant brokerage fee!

Instead of twenty people behaving insanely to get your house, you will have to settle for one buyer who might even be smart about it. We could get through it without all of the problems that come when the buyers wake up three days after winning a bidding war, and they’re ready to join the Peace Corps to get out of the deal.

Like many agents, I have had a very hard time with the white-hot market of the past few years. I love to work with buyers, and while my contracts went through as often as not, I wasn’t always thrilled about what some clients had to do get a house. And as a listing agent, I spent a lot of time explaining to my sellers that, “No, we can’t do that – it’s unethical and wrong.”

So, is this shift in the market a bad thing? Well, gosh. There is finally some inventory out there to show. Buyers can sometimes sleep on it without the “you snooze, you lose” principle automatically kicking in. People can submit an offer that includes a couple of days to do a home inspection. If the price tag is out of whack, they might even be able to submit an offer for a bit less and have it accepted.

So Ken! Sandra! You’re scaring old ladies!

Nah. They’re scaring themselves, Thank God she doesn’t watch Fox News or read the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. If she did, I would have no time between phone calls to get ready for the party!

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