Master The Market of the Moment

A wise man once wrote, "The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well". This quote is especially true in the real estate world. Every market brings it's own rhythm and it's own rhyme.

This market in particular not only has your typical sale or resale of single family homes, town homes, and condos but now we have short sales, foreclosures, and REO's to deal with. They're increasingly common these days because of the values that have dropped on many homes whose buyers had little or no equity in the first place. "While there are always a small percentage of homes that go into default or foreclosure, during a shift distressed properties can flood the market and begin to impact the marketplace." (Shift, Gary Keller)

A veteran real estate agent from the greater Bellevue area stated that in her 30+ years of real estate work, she had never handled a short sale. "There was no need," she said. "It was a whole different market. But they're probably going to be an important part of the market for a while yet. It's going to take a long time to recover."

Short sales and lender-owned homes now account for about 35 percent of listings in some Washington counties. "They're coming up every day in large numbers, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's even larger than that." (http://www.seattlepi.com/business/405744_shortsale01.html)

Although they can be difficult and down right unpleasant at times, us agents ought to pull together to help our short sale and foreclosure sellers to get out of their unfortunate situations and aid our savvy buyers and help them get the deals out there. These homes are not going to go away on their own, let's get working!