When faced with having to accept an offer that’s lower than expected, sellers like to think that there will always be other buyers – and there will be.
But will they pay the same price….or more, later?
Here’s a good example. First the builder said they were going to auction the three model homes in a sealed-bid process, but when the offers only came in around $1,100,000, they changed their mind, and relisted them with regular list prices. The two best are $1.3 and $1.35 million.
Their justification was that the highest sale so far at the end of the tract was $1,227,500, and they wanted to protect that buyer, plus they really weren’t that motivated because they still had the four remaining production homes to sell in the $800,000s.
So instead of selling the models today for around $1,100,000, they are going to take their chances in early spring – the classic two-in-the-bush strategy:
So it really wasn`t an auction at all. Like Auction.com/Fannie Mae set up the `winner` gets to make an offer for a set period of time. I understand the government and the banks want to drag this out as long as they can to maximize sales prices, but the danger is that the dam will burst and prices will plummet in a way that will make the current situation look like the Fourth of July.
In the past you could leave a property vacant for a couple months, but these sellers better do something to prevent swatters who seem to prey on these +$1 million homes.