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Hi Elke, I assumed (bad, I know) that the poster meant DOLLY Lenz (who is, or at least was when I knew of her, also one of the head honchos at Prudential) but now that you mention it, I'm unsure whether Dottie HERMAN or DOLLY Lenz was being quoted there.
As to bidding wars vs multiple offers... guess that depends on what one's definition of those terms are. Obviously, when a seller gets offers from more than one buyer, that's multiple offers; but at what point do those competing offers become a bidding war? IMHO, if you have Buyer A, Buyer B, and Buyer C, all working with different agents and those agents are all getting calls from the listing agent saying "My seller has another offer at X, can your buyer match or better that?" ... to us, that's a bidding war. And that's the situation we've been involved in, not once, not twice, but with FOUR different houses since late August.
Hi Elke, I assumed (bad, I know) that the poster meant DOLLY Lenz (who is, or at least was when I knew of her, also one of the head honchos at Prudential) but now that you mention it, I'm unsure whether Dottie HERMAN or DOLLY Lenz was being quoted there.
As to bidding wars vs multiple offers... guess that depends on what one's definition of those terms are. Obviously, when a seller gets offers from more than one buyer, that's multiple offers; but at what point do those competing offers become a bidding war? IMHO, if you have Buyer A, Buyer B, and Buyer C, all working with different agents and those agents are all getting calls from the listing agent saying "My seller has another offer at X, can your buyer match or better that?" ... to us, that's a bidding war. And that's the situation we've been involved in, not once, not twice, but with FOUR different houses since late August.
Okay - - then I am assuming that you did not win any of the bidding wars since you are still looking to buy - -good for you!!! -- - at some point you must have realized that you actually were in a bidding war and bailed out when you also must have realized that you were being drawn in to this crazy situation..... Is there any chance you might have been "bidding against yourself" ??? - - i.e.: have you captured the recorded final sales prices of those houses to see what they finally "did sell for"....just a thought. (You are a well-educated buyer, so I bet you have checked)
All I am trying to say is that in this market/economy with the amount of priced-to-sit inventory coupled with buyer/sellers sentiment, even a lower than lowball offer is "still an offer" for sellers!!!!
Long Island real estate prices just dropped significantly this past quarter and I saw projections saying that prices in the area should drop by 15% in 2009. I would wait until I saw real estate prices bottoming. Better to buy on the way up than on the way down because you would know that what you bought won't be worth less tomorrow.
Hi Elke, I assumed (bad, I know) that the poster meant DOLLY Lenz (who is, or at least was when I knew of her, also one of the head honchos at Prudential) but now that you mention it, I'm unsure whether Dottie HERMAN or DOLLY Lenz was being quoted there.
LOL, easy enough to do when the OP wrote Dotty...
However, since the OP was referring to the "head of Prudential", that would be DOTTIE; DOLLY is a highly successful, high powered Broker with Prudential... I didn't take the time to research the quote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by totallyfrazzled
As to bidding wars vs multiple offers... guess that depends on what one's definition of those terms are. Obviously, when a seller gets offers from more than one buyer, that's multiple offers; but at what point do those competing offers become a bidding war? IMHO, if you have Buyer A, Buyer B, and Buyer C, all working with different agents and those agents are all getting calls from the listing agent saying "My seller has another offer at X, can your buyer match or better that?" ... to us, that's a bidding war. And that's the situation we've been involved in, not once, not twice, but with FOUR different houses since late August.
What you're describing sounds like a bidding war, where one potential buyer is pitted against another (or several). Common in a Sellers' market, less so now; however, if a house is priced aggressively - as some of them are - they are often negotiated to more than the original asking price even now.
Many buyers assume that ALL houses currently on the market are overpriced, but that isn't so. I'd like to add here that IMHO it's easier for a professional to determine if a house is priced "right", because it's their (and my) business.
LOL, easy enough to do when the OP wrote Dotty...
However, since the OP was referring to the "head of Prudential", that would be DOTTIE; DOLLY is a highly successful, high powered Broker with Prudential... I didn't take the time to research the quote.
What you're describing sounds like a bidding war, where one potential buyer is pitted against another (or several). Common in a Sellers' market, less so now; however, if a house is priced aggressively - as some of them are - they are often negotiated to more than the original asking price even now.
Many buyers assume that ALL houses currently on the market are overpriced, but that isn't so. I'd like to add here that IMHO it's easier for a professional to determine if a house is priced "right", because it's their (and my) business.
Why do you say it is "easier" for an agent to determine if a house is priced correctly? So many tools and current, up-to-date information is available now in public domain that anyone can make a very accurate assessment of market pricing. A good buyer can crunch comps, analyze recent list-to-sale figures/siting/SF's/physical spaces and such with anyone.
If it were easier for Professionals to determine if a house is priced "right", why are the vast majority still priced "wrong"?
I dont recall if it was Dottie Herman or Dollie Lenz- - one of them from Prudentiall said it (sorry, I got their first names mixed up)
"What you're describing sounds like a bidding war, where one potential buyer is pitted against another (or several). Common in a Sellers' market, less so now; however, if a house is priced aggressively - as some of them are - they are often negotiated to more than the original asking price even now.
Many buyers assume that ALL houses currently on the market are overpriced, but that isn't so. I'd like to add here that IMHO it's easier for a professional to determine if a house is priced "right", because it's their (and my) business".[/quote]
Today's NY Times states that current LI housing inventory has swelled to 20+ months...the second highest in the region......
Potential Buyers: Do you still want to pay "higher" than a list price for grandma's teardown? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/re...te/28zone.html
Okay - - then I am assuming that you did not win any of the bidding wars since you are still looking to buy ..... at some point you must have realized that you actually were in a bidding war and bailed out when you also must have realized that you were being drawn in to this crazy situation..... have you captured the recorded final sales prices of those houses to see what they finally "did sell for"....
Actually we did do that on the two of the four that have since closed; one was permanently taken off the market because the wife changed her mind about selling literally at the moment the contracts were in front of her; and the last is still in contract but hasn't closed yet, so MLS doesn't have the final price on it. The first "war" house sold for the same amount as our top bid but what a coincidence, the winning buyer was represented by the listing agent's wife! Of course nobody knew this during the negotiations. We really felt "used" in that one and it still rankles; we'd think twice before looking at any other house listed by that agent again (and ironically, he is with Prudential.... "range pricing" gimmick and all....!).
The second "war" house sold for 8K more than our highest bid. Would we have gone up that little bit more, had we known? That's still a topic of discussion between me and my SO; he says he would, but I would not have felt 100% comfortable with it.
As far as why we dropped out: It had nothing to do with whether or not there were other competing offers. We had determined between ourselves the absolute maximum price we were comfortable paying for each house, and when that price was reached we simply said "No, we won't go that high" to the succeeding counteroffers. That price was not the same for all four houses, though. For instance, the second house (the one that sold for 8K more than our top) simply was not worth that amount of money TO US, even though that amount was less than the first house (the one that sold for the same as our top bid) was.... even though the second house was larger and on a larger piece of property. And what we eventually went up to on the cancelled-sale house was 60K higher than that first house.
We would have dropped out at the same prices even if there were no other buyers making offers on those houses (in other words if the counteroffers were simply coming directly from the sellers).
Ironically, that first house was listed with the PITA range-pricing with a 75K spread! Our first offer was 10K above the lowest number; that quickly became irrelevant because of the supposed "other offer" which we were told was "right in the middle". The final sale price was only 2K less than their top range-price figure. What was annoying was that when the bidding got within that top 10K, the listing agent claimed that his seller "could not take less" than what our top offer turned out to be. Well, if they "could not" take less, then why waste everyone's time by offering a stupid starting range-price of 73K less than that? (I know, I know: to rope buyers into the bidding war process...)
As you can see, I don't have a favorable opinion of Prudential in general. I was royally misrepresented about 10 years ago on two sales by a Prudential listing agent who manipulated one of the sales so as to make sure her boyfriend's customer was the buyer; at one time I went through an agent's licensing process sponsored by Prudential only to find out that they would not let me represent buyers, as they had promised, which was the only reason I had done it; and the firm I used to work for had several dealings with Ms Lenz which were let's just say "less than cordial". Then this latest yahoo from Prudential (a veteran in the business, btw) who convinced the seller that his/his wife's buyer was more "reliable" than we were (even though we had a conditional approval in hand and were 70% cash, and had established a great rapport with the sellers).
I realize there are bad apples in every barrel, and "YMMV" and all that, but I now do approach anything that comes out of a Prudential person's mouth with the assumption that they are being less than candid, especially when it comes to the existence of supposed "other bids". It's too bad that there isn't some mechanism whereby the listing agent has to attest in writing to the actual existence of competing offers rather than simply call the buyer's agent and claim verbally that there is one, with no proof of same.
Well......sounds like you are doing the right thing - - you are an educated buyer. Problem is sometimes, there are many "un-educated" buyers that you sometimes have to compete with. Nothing you can do about that except what you are doing - - set a price and walk away if you have to.
Every open house we walk in to: if they sense wife or I are at the least bit interested, we either get a phone call that evening or next day saying: "we have an offer - - we want to give you a chance to bid as well"......you know what, 9 times out of ten that house remains on the market still. So you really cant tell if it is BS or not....seems like it is though.
Every open house we walk in to: if they sense wife or I are at the least bit interested, we either get a phone call that evening or next day saying: "we have an offer - - we want to give you a chance to bid as well"......
That's the beauty of using a buyer agent: When we walk into an open house, the first thing we do is to hand over our agent's card and say "We're already represented by our buyer agent". And as such we are not even asked to sign in.
Only once were we pressed into signing the register anyway, but we simply wrote our last name, followed by "rep. by Mary Jones" and then our buyer agent's office phone #.
I also know a few people who simply write down any name and a fake phone # just to avoid the kind of calls you mentioned.
As far as I know, the company that our buyer agent works for is the only one that not only requires a sign-in by all who come to their open houses (represented by another agent or not) but also an accompanying photo ID. They post a sign to that effect right at the entry door.
Why do you say it is "easier" for an agent to determine if a house is priced correctly? So many tools and current, up-to-date information is available now in public domain that anyone can make a very accurate assessment of market pricing. A good buyer can crunch comps, analyze recent list-to-sale figures/siting/SF's/physical spaces and such with anyone.
Again, IMHO that's purely statistics - important though they are. I use them as well. But there is also the "neighborhood knowledge" that can impact price, sometimes significantly. I agree about tons of information out there, but interpretation is subjective.
Shall we "agree to disagree"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by modmondays
If it were easier for Professionals to determine if a house is priced "right", why are the vast majority still priced "wrong"?
Wish I knew . Here are some of my conjectures:
1) seller has a price in mind and won't go below that; if agent balks, seller walks... to another agent who will accept that price (happened to me a few times recently)
2) agent will quote a higher price just to get the listing
3) agent is not familiar with the neighborhood and uses "statistics only"
4) listing has been around for a long time and price reductions haven't caught up with reality yet
5) if recent purchase, seller can't come to grips with "no equity" or worse, "negative equity" and "wants to try anyway".
Also, sometimes "wrong" price can be in the eyes of the beholder. As buyers, we all have "triggers" that make us like one house and reject another--and they're different for all of us.
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but what a coincidence, the winning buyer was represented by the listing agent's wife! Of course nobody knew this during the negotiations. We really felt "used" in that one and it still rankles; we'd think twice before looking at any other house listed by that agent again (and ironically, he is with Prudential.... "range pricing" gimmick and all....!).
. Here are some of my conjectures: 
