Educate - Do Not Sell. At least for Selling a Home in the Annapolis MD area

Educate your Sellers, do not sell them. At least for selling a home in the Annapolis, MD area.

I had two back to back listing appointments with sellers who were in no rush to move. As we were reviewing the local market stats, I asked why they were considering a move and what their timeframe was.

Interesting, both of them had planned on waiting for the spring. I told them both that the market will be completely different at that time and not to put too much heart into the numbers we were currently reviewing.

I needed to let them know that waiting until the Spring may not be the ideal situation for them for several reasons:

1. At the end of this year, banks may be dumping their "toxic loans" that are currently on their books, but not on the market yet.

We then discussed that when supply is higher than demand, the prices go down.

2. Waiting until Spring will put them on the market with the other sellers who believe that selling a home in the Spring brings more lookers.

I explained that we don't want lookers, we just want one buyer. The prospects who are looking in the dead of winter are generally more imminent buyers than the lookers during nicer weather.

3. Our local economy is showing signs of stabilization, but I believe (full disclaimer here) that the market is not ready to recover right now and we have additional declines to work through. If this is the case, we will continue to see prices falter.

We discussed what prices would look like if the market saw declines even as low as 5%.

In some circumstances waiting may be the sage thing to do. If the reasons to wait aren't sound, we are obligated by doing the right thing for our sellers, to educate on the "cost of waiting".

Best,

Diane