It’s possibly a reaction to the 8k tax credit from Uncle Sam, but I don’t think so. It seems like buyers are snatching up bargain properties once they hit the magical correct list price.

It just proves that when it comes to pricing, it’s better to SET the market than to CHASE the market. Yes, it’s honestly better to be a just slightly low and to get a quick sale and/or multiple offers than it is to be over priced and to linger on the market.

The reasoning behind this is many-fold. But if you simply factor in your carrying costs, you’ll see that holding on to your property for 6 months while it lingers on the market has costs associated with it. It can easily cost a seller thousands of dollars a month, for 6 or more months, to sit on a slightly over priced property. We’re talking 10’s of thousands of dollars. Why not just drop the price to begin with and generate multiple offers over a very brief time frame (with low or no carrying costs), the result of which could be a bidding war (higher sales than list price) as well as a quick closing?

Not to mention that properties which sit on the market tend to attract low-ball offers as buyers seem to sense blood in the water.

Email bob@realasave.com for any questions about the Boulder or Denver real estate market, or if you’re interested in getting 50% of our paycheck via our Buyer Rebate Program.

ConocoPhillips is our big, new neighbor up the Denver/Boulder corridor just off of Hwy 36. You probably know that they purchased a 400++ acre campus from Storage Tec a while back, and there’s been lots of news and some considerable speculation as to what their plans are.

Well, it appears as if they’re going to use the site as the research and development center on renewable energy. Good news for this area. Even better news that over the next 20 years or so they’ll ramp things up to around 7,000 employees or more. Very nice for the real estate market, and wonderful to have this type of company in the area.

I hope this acts as a draw for other renewable energy companies in the same way that Sun Microsystems and IBM have helped give us a good foundation and big draw in the technology department.

Won’t you be my….neighbor.

Shoot me an email at bob@realasave.com if you have any Denver or Boulder real estate questions, or if you want some more info about our Colorado commission rebate program where we give you 50% of our paycheck.

It used to be that once you get through inspections it was all downhill from there.  Closing is just around the corner and unless the buyer decides to bail on the contract then the property should close (Incidentally,  buyers are really in charge and have lots of protection in Colorado.  More on that another time ).   But with the way that the lending industry is reacting, and often overreacting, to the recent housing meltdown, there is a new hurdle that’s often more treacherous than inspection: The Appraisal.

I have no problem with an honest, experienced, reliable appraiser doing his or her job and placing a proper value on a home.  And if that value is less than the contract price then so be it.  Appraisers serve a very important function in the real estate world.  And honestly, if there were more rigorous appraisals in years past then maybe we would have had the severe run up in housing prices we saw over the last decade or so…that’s debatable, but an interesting issue none the less.

The problem I have with the way that appraisals are currently done is that we are getting inexperienced appraisers who are often NOT familiar with the neighborhood trends and micro-market they’re working in.  Does this sound like typical BS from a Realtor who just wants the deal to close?  Sure, I understand skepticism like that.  But all real estate IS local.  And you truly need to understand how pricing works from one city and one neighborhood to the next if you’re going to put a proper value on a place.

What to do?  Well, since there’s really no way for sellers to change appraisal laws/rules and force lenders to hire experienced, impartial, LOCAL appraisers, then we have to do the next best thing: make sure you have pricing support IN HAND at every moment when your home is for sale.  Sounds obvious, right?  Well, not to everyone.  Maybe you’ve had your home listed for 9 months and you started out at $350k, and dropped to $345k a few weeks ago.  You remember the comps from 9 months ago and they clearly supported a price of 345-350k, so you priced on the high side (which is not the best tactic anyway…).  But it’s quite possible that the market has dropped significantly since then.  And when an appraiser comes to value your home they’re only going to be interested in the last 3 months of sold comps.  And there had better be about 3 of them.

So be sure you are constantly updating your sold comps as you sit on the market.  Numbers don’t lie.  If home values are dropping significantly in your area then it’s best to SET the market then to chase the market.  Price just under what the numbers support, generate some interest and get your place sold.

Remember that www.realasave.com can help you save lots of cash on commissions with our Colorado commission rebate program and flat-fee listing service, so email bob@realasave.com for more info.

Your 7-year-old kid could come up with a better short sale process than the ones currently being implemented by some of the largest banks in the country.  Any kid who ever traded baseball cards knows what it’s like to have a hot commodity.   Ask your kid which of these strategies he’d use if he had a baseball card that 4 of his friends wanted: would he a) ask one friend at a time what they’d trade him for without checking what the other friends would be willing to trade, or would he  b) ask all of his friends what they’d like to pay/trade, gather all the bids and THEN make his decision.

The answer is obvious.  What good does it do to have a hot commodity if you don’t allow the bidders to feel the heat?  But banks are currently employing strategy “a” from the stupid example above.  No kidding.  I was dealing with a bank today, let’s call them Schmank of  Unmerica, and the short sale property in Denver had 3 interested parties.  But the bank would only CONSIDER one offer at a time.  And they go all the way with that offer.  Meaning, it takes weeks/months for that single offer to make it through to someone in negotiations/review and then they make a decision on that single offer without considering any of the waiting offers.   And if that offer does not work, well, then our genius bank moves on to offer #2…and ONLY offer #2.  And maybe that one works out.

Why wouldn’t a bank simply go back to all 4 interested bidders and ask for their best and highest by 4pm tomorrow?  And then go with the best offer?  Isn’t that the best thing for their bottom line?

Short sales are the monster just below the surface of our economy.   These monsters are having an awful impact on property values, and are accounting for substantial losses at banks.  Losses that our government has shown it’s willing to use our tax dollars to rectify.

Email bob@realasave.com if you have any short sale questions, or if you just want to discuss Denver/Boulder real estate.