EIGHT SILLY EXCUSES

Don’t chase the market down.
by Neil Jenman

Something terrible is happening to a lot of agents. They’re not making sales. Real estate salespeople are starting to go weeks, even months, without a commission cheque.

But if it’s bad for agents, it’s also bad for the people who traditionally pay the agents – the property sellers. Tens of thousands of properties are languishing unsold. No one wants to buy them. Or, at least that’s how it seems.

What should sellers do in today’s depressed market? How do they still get a good selling price?

Some sellers are just taking their properties off the market. They’ve given up; thrown their hands in the air. They’ll wait until the market gets better which assumes, of course, that it does get better. Well, it always has – hasn’t it?

There’s no way that Australia can go the way of America where property prices have fallen by tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars. In some parts of America, properties that once sold for $600,000 are now selling for less than one hundred thousand. In almost every country in the world real estate prices are well down. And, even if The Economist says that Australia’s prices are among the most over-inflated in the world and we are due for price falls of at least 25 per cent, it’s not really going to happen. Is it? Let’s hope not.

The reports that Australia is in a worse position than the US market was just prior to the GFC are just designed to scare us.

Still, if you’ve got your property for sale at the moment, you’ve got some serious thinking to do if you really do intend to sell. You need to make sure that you get the best possible price for your property. In order to get the best price, however, there are some things you must understand. One of the hallmarks of successful people is their ability to find and see reality. They don’t make decisions based on fantasy. They get the facts and then they act.

The most important fact – the reality – in today’s real estate market is that prices are depressed. Prices have fallen. The price you could have got yesterday is more than the price you can get today.

But, on the good side, the price you can get today is almost certainly more than you will get tomorrow. The most powerful (and worrying) aspect of today’s property market is that, despite, the Reserve Bank lowering rates recently, prices have kept falling; indeed, they’ve got worse……more.

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