Nancy Conner, ABR - Olympia/Thurston County WA

Burfoot Park is a county park in Olympia that is a wonderful place for family fun, with a big grassy area to picnic or play in the grass, playground equipment for the kids, and then you can go exploring down the wooded trails that lead to the saltwater beach.

We were lucky enough to go check it out recently while there was an extremely low tide and so there was LOTS of beach to walk and amazing sea creatures to encounter!

Very educational encounters with crabs, seaweed, pretty shells, & the gorgeous backdrop of gentle waves rolling in and sailboats gliding by.

Only problem is that county budget woes have this park on the chopping block, so go visit soon - like before the end of September or it may be closed to the public!

So here's the deal, Mr. and Mrs. Seller: buyers are noticing some things that just don't add up about your house. And first, a word about buyers today - they are savvy, willing to educate themselves about the market, and very, very cautious. They are cautious because of the general volatility of our real estate market and economy and worried that they will accidentally overpay for a home. They also are cautious because they want to stay well within their means and not become another sad statistic of buyers who bought WAY more house than they can really afford.

When these buyers go out looking at homes and yours emerges as one that they really like - it has a floor plan that works for them, they love the yard, the location is perfect - then they start trying to figure out your price - and something doesn't add up.

We do a little research & they see what you paid for it 3 years ago (did you realize that many if not all MLS databases include history info for listing addresses so a buyer's agent can easily show the buyer what price it sold for last; and tax roll records are also easily accessible in most areas for another spot a buyer or their agent can locate the details of when you bought that house & what the price was). So the buyers see what you paid 3 years ago. They can see that there really haven't been any improvements made in those 3 years since you bought it. They see that the comparable sales statistics for similar homes show that the market has been pretty flat since you bought - prices just really haven't gone up. So the buyers are wondering why you decided to price your home 15% above the price you paid. They say "Something doesn't add up!"

Or yours is one of a number of homes for sale in your neighborhood. You do realize don't you that many if not all buyers are going to be looking at those other homes, not just yours, and then comparing what they see and how each home is priced. If the other homes asking prices all fall within a couple thousand dollars of each other and yours - which is the same size and even floor plan as some of those - is priced $10,000 higher, the buyers wonder what makes yours worth more? They say "Something doesn't add up!"

And the real bottom line is this - when the buyers decide that something just doesn't add up about the way your home is priced, a very likely outcome is that the buyers will just subtract your home from their list of homes they are considering.

I like taking a periodic look at the MLS numbers for the Olympia/Lacey/Tumwater area to check out the accuracy of my gut impressions of what is happening in our real estate market. Lately I have been working with several buyers who are finding not such a large supply of available homes as the media might make you think is out there.

If I search in the 3 city area for active residential listings, and exclude manufactured homes, fixers, & presales (these buyers are all wanting something they can move into in the next 30-60 days) the total number of all prices is 1013. Seems like quite a few - so far.

Then I excluded short sales (back to wanting to move in within 60 days...) - now we are down to 980, although our search field to identify short sales is so new that I see that number still does include some with required third party approvals.

Now to get realistic for my buyers: What they need would be a minimum of 2 bedrooms, minimum of 900 square feet and no more than $250,000 price tag. Not asking for the moon here - just a basic modest home. Again I excluded manufactured homes, homes that are not yet built, short sales, and condition below average. Well, now I am finding just 202 homes total. If I dip down further for one buyer's budget and look only up to $200,000 (aren't you hearing that there are LOTS of those homes available??) - well, I only find 55 available - and at least 11 of those specify they are being sold strictly in "as is" condition (and from the photos "as is" might not be QUITE ready to move into....).

Of course these buyers have some other criteria, too - they'd prefer not to buy something built prior to 1950, would love at least a one car garage, know that some geographic areas included in the above search really won't work for them etc. So it gets a lot more obvious why it feels like we have looked at everything out there and are not finding it to be such a buyer's market after all!