Starting the conversation...buyers bringing offers....

As Supply increases and demand waffels, this buyer driven market warrents care when delivering the under value offer to the seller. Gone are the days of taking offense to what has been termed "ridiculous" offers. Offense these days is a luxury. Consider the offer a conversation starter. A place to begin.

In the big picture, as the foreclosure market looms large and prices are driving downward, why not talk TIME. What is the value of Time? When Time and Money share the stage which rules.

I recently put a property of mine on the market in ski country. Sure, I know it is a bad Time to sell. But we don't use it anymore, we don't rent it because my husband is cautious about tenants, it sits empty and costs me money every month...Seems to me a good TIME to sell. But of course, the real estate climate is slow. My agent, (yes, I hired an agent and will pay full commission) says only one property has sold in my price range in 6 months. YIKES! So I took some advice from an instructor at the Century 21 Top Agent Retreat in Chicago. I told my agent, that I want to be aggressive. That TIME is valuable to me so I would like to start at one price and reduce the price by 2% every 3 weeks until the first of December.

I want an offer. I want to start the conversation. This is no time to be emotional about Real Estate. Sure, I would have loved to have made some money on this little house by the river. Sure, I would have loved the opportunity to pay capitol gains, Are you kidding? Capitol Gain says to me that I did OK! But, because I have kids sniffing around college tuitions and a husband about to retire... Maybe, TIME is a little more valuable than the dream I had of making money.

None of us have crystal balls... we could not have foretold this market. And, even tho the sellers want to make this Selling Climate "OUR FAULT"... ha, ha... we, the Realtors of America, had nothing to do with it.

So start the conversation. Get the offer. Talk TIME with your sellers. A Bird in the Hand... As my mother used to say....

And by the way, if you want to really know what your clients are going thru...try selling your own house... calling the moving company, working with agents... etc... Holy Smoke, that is another blog altogether...