What Price LOVE?

Earlier I Raised: What (or more accurately) WHO Determines Fair Market Value? (appraisers vs. auto valuations vs. bank reviews. We have a lot of theories on accurately matching up the person who will pay a given price. Kinda like describing the love of your life...words just don't get it. Ask any Realtor or Loan officer about the deal that fell apart on a bank review of their beloved property's appraisal...many a tear shed on those stories. I would just like to suggest that the physical aspects of valuation are much less tangible than we suppose. But you knew that.

Perhaps the More Important Question Is: What Drives Value? Median Sales Price and Median Property Value and Median Income are terms that hint at the obvious: Value is based on what the particular market will bear. And we all know that depends. On how desperate the seller is, how cool the buyer is, how hot the view and how easy it is to finance to name a few. Those are the physical facts. Perceived value is hard to pin down. Sure, we can cough up lots of statistics to support this price or that price. But, like the word 'quality' which is my pet peeve most ill-used word in the entire English language (what quality: poor, bad, indifferent, excellent?) 'value' is a word we often use to indicate high when in fact it could be any level. Emotions folks. Emotions drive us. Our emotive responses to the feel of something determine how we decide what to put our money on. Whether it's a horse or a house or a pair of high heels you can bet emotion footed the bill on which one to buy. You might say the value is in the eyes of the beholder.

What Are The Key Value Drivers in Your Area?I'll bet we all have different drivers' based on our particular local quirky buying public. Here in the Pacific NW you can bet that many buyers nowadays are looking for greener, cleaner, scaled back lifestyles which is why they have come here in the first place. Not necessarily your 'been here three generations' crowd but they are also catching onto the value of cleaner, greener, smaller footprint homes that are easier to keep and have a more modest charm than the huge empty boxes stacked side by side in some rather faceless fenced off community with a vacuumed golf course. Sure we have lots of golf courses...in fact more courses per capita than most areas but the 'driver' pardon the pun to our local golfers is more likely to be those with a decent ability to sidestep puddles and brave early morning fog and ice on the golf cart paths. In other words hardy sorts who like our wider open spaces and happy about the space between human beings! Our buyers are folks who thrive on the smell of Douglas Firs and wood fires and rain and Rosemary. Maybe we should all be advertising our area in garden and adventure magazines, not traditional homes of the rich and famous outlets?

It Stands to Reason That If You Know Your Value Drivers, you know what (benefits) to advertise, to whom, where and how much (far) to go (spend)! And remember: Smile and BREATHE!!!!! Air's good for you!

We saw rates drop back into 5% and below range on Monday: Alert your buyers to lock!

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susan templeton www.loannetter.com

washington loan officer license 510-LO-31434 branch license: 510-MB-24707-50145