Housing Bubble? Your thoughts, predictions (Gorham, Prospect: home, job transfer, buy)

[SantaFeSisters]

El, have any houses sold in your area in the last 4 months?

[Elcarim]

Yes. The houses are selling. There are two agents in town doing most of the selling that has been done. Our agent has sold 1 in this town since the end of September. The other two agents have sold 3-4 in the same time frame, and the other houses sold are split between several non-local agents.

[WhoFanMe]

Your agent needs to sit down with you and go over all of the similar homes that have come on the market, gone under contract, sold, and come off the market and discover what is working and what isn't. When I say similar homes, I mean bedrooms, bathrooms, square feet, lot size, age, etc. On the surface if you're not getting showings, either the buyer pool doesn't know you're on the market or they know and they are choosing other candidates to look at and make offers. Your agent needs the courage to tell you the truth and not what you want to hear.

[Elcarim]

We've done the comps with her twice over the last few weeks. I'm not sure what truth she would be keeping from us. It has been the general consensus that we have one of the "nicest" and one of the "most beautiful" homes in the area, other than the new construction, which we are not really competing with. Our home has just been completely updated and is being kept in immaculate condition. I just don't know what else there is to address.

[Elcarim]

The other thing I might add is that we are priced at $62.45/sq ft (brick home), whereas other homes in our subdivision, some not as nice, some frame and some new construction are all priced between $63-69/sq ft. So, we are actually priced the lowest overall.

[WhoFanMe]

I'm not in your local market and haven't been able to follow your home on the MLS system, but I suspect that you came on too high and lost all the momentum that a new listing generates. Now that you've been on the market for some time, you are no longer a new and hot listing and need to compete with all of the homes in your category. What did your agent recommend?

[Elcarim]

We intially listed at $65/sq ft. which was mid-range for our neighborhood. Since we have one of the nicer homes in the neighborhood, our agent felt that was a good starting point to draw interest. Now we are at $62/ft, which is the lowest price point in the neighborhood.

[Elcarim]

And our agent just says we need to do more marketing.

[Elcarim]

The other thing I feel has been a significant hindrance is that we are now on our 3rd representing agent since listing the end of September, due to turnover in the office there. They also went through several weeks of change when they switched from Keller Williams to Exit Realty. I don't even know with the first agent, who was on our case for about 4 weeks, if we were ever in the newspaper. The second agent who was assigned lasted 3 weeks before taking another job with a salaried agency. Now, the owner of the agency is our listing agent.

It's been a rediculous mess, and I'm afraid we're suffering because of the turmoil. I just can't prove that. Our contract ends in March, and we will not list with them again.

[Zymer]

According to some of the articles I've been reading (CNN, Moody's), the RE market is [generally] expected to continue to decline into 2008, with recovery not anticipated until perhaps the second quarter of 2009.

One should consider the the expenses and opportunity cost that will be incurred by continuing to maintain the property, and whether those losses will be greater or lesser than the loss represented by a price reduction that could move the property faster.