The real estate market right now is not a lot of fun. By that I mean that I’m seeing a lot of behaviors out of buyers and sellers that have me scratching my head. Another agent mentioned to me the other day that she’s starting to lose faith in humanity based on some of the garbage that she’s seen and dealt with this year. I was glad to hear that I’m not the only one struggling with the way people are acting.
Yes, it’s a Buyer’s Market in many cases. But let’s have a little common sense and decency, shall we people? For example, when a house is advertised “as is”- meaning that the seller isn’t going to fix any inspection issues- and you have your home inspections done, don’t come back to the seller and ask for TWENTY EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS in repairs. Not that I had to help a client deal with that exact craziness earlier this year…
Negotiations are long and drawn out these days. Each side is trying to get the better of the other side and “win.” Getting an accepted offer is only a minor victory. Inspection negotiations are terrible in most cases. Buyers, it seems, are trying to extract every last pound of flesh, or dollar, that they can. I say a little prayer, carry a rabbit’s foot, four leaf clover and wear my lucky socks to every appraisal. Because that’s what a crapshoot things have become. Honestly, I wish I could share half of the ridiculousness that I’ve seen this year. But I can’t. Client confidentiality. To protect the guilty. Attorneys are telling me that only 50% of the files coming across their desks are actually closing. It used to be as high as 80-90% of files would close. People really aren’t seeing eye to eye these days.
There seems to be very little taking the high road. I’ve seen instances where a person feels they are being wronged in one transaction (say, on the sell side) so they then carry out equally abhorrent behavior on another transaction (say, on the buy side) to even things out.
Karma, people. Karma. And that’s all I’m going to say.
Your photo scares me.
Scarcity, or diminishing resources, in any system usally drives new behaviors. In this case, it sounds like its driving distasteful ones. It can be a fine, but still clear, line between hard but honest negotiating — and manipulative, irrational, less than honest, negotiating. Here, sellers and buyers are unfortunately in some cases forced to deal with each other even where they’d probably rather tell the other party to take a hike – so to speak. And watching people adopt different styles to suit different situations, with little consistent principles, is disturbing. Some agents are not immune to that from what I’ve seen either, as we know.
That’s why its better, a luxury really, to sell when you really don’t have to, or when you can do so at your leisure – then you can cut out much of the back and forth, and simply say “no” and move on. But for many, that’s simply not possible, particularly in systems experiencing contraction.