Bay Area Sweet Digs

April 22, 2008

Stubborn or Stupid: You Make the Call

stupid Stubborn or Stupid: You Make the CallAll I could do was laugh and shake my head when I saw today’s top listing on the Daily Stat board. No address, long on the market at 189 days, and only one price reduction during that time of less than 2%. TWO PERCENT! You’ve got to have some seriously unwilling sellers to get a triple combo like that.

Located somewhere in Novato in the gated Marin Country Club development, I am unsure why the agent didn’t list the address on the MLS. Owners objected? A community rule? Then why is there is live link to a virtual tour which states the address (37 Thunderbird)? This virtual tour has the same photos as MLS, nothing graphically wonderful, just a place to locate the address. Maybe this is a way to avoid showing the last sale price, or Zillow/eppraisal prices, or nearby comps. Without an address, there can be none of these things. Is this a sly maneuver by the agent or the owners?

You would think that with the home having listed last October and being on the market for 6 months, that the sellers would have insisted adding the address to help buyers find the place. And either very neat and tidy people live here or the property is vacant, which would make one think that a quick sale is necessary. Having the means to hang on to vacant property is rare, even among the Marin CC set. But with only one price drop (less than a month ago) of $26,000, or 1.9% of its original asking price of $1,425,000, I guess this is not the case. Typically you would have seen at least a 10% price reduction by now. Not knowing the last sale price, or an approximate value, I can’t venture to guess if this is a necessary measure or stubbornness on the part of the sellers, or bad advice by the agent.

What do you think?

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Posted by susan.brady on April 22, 2008 7:57 AM | del.icio.us | Digg

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  • Hello Susan,

    That's just one of the things consumers will always have to deal with and probably never find out why.
    I wrote about this problem on my blog a while back:

    http://kfcblog.blogspot.com/20...

    And to re-state, the annoying problem I have is when the agent announces that there is an open house. Where do I go? :)

    In summary I think consumers will always find a way to see the house starting with asking their agent for help.

    In regards to your discussion in tying the asking price with undisclosed address, I think these are issues which instead should be discussed separately. I do however agree with you that the seller/agent is nuts and well let's face it... greedy.

    I am not knowledgeable in the Novato area but when I was searching for homes in the SF Bay Area, I saw similar homes priced like that. This discussion of homes priced too high is exactly what I wrote about in my blog a while back:

    http://kfcblog.blogspot.com/20...

    I think sellers should not think about what they want from their house. Instead I think they should look at the target audience their home attracts and price according to what this target audience have paid. In addition, news of the area and country should also be taken into account. Obviously in this time frame with all the negativity about the economy, loans, jobs and high costs of food and gas, it's going to be very difficult to rope in a buyer.

    So with all these sellers pricing their property high, I just say good luck finding their golden anchor.
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