Tales from the Trenches: This Market is SO Unpredictable!

If you've been paying attention to the market for the last few years, you know that calling it HOT is an understatement, lol! And yet, sometimes, some homes, don't sell! Well they WILL eventually, lol...just not according to the original plan!

There's a home that I showed a couple of weeks ago, great neighbourhood, quite spacious, showed reasonably well & in that $300-$350k price range that is SUPER HOT right now!

From what I've been told, 2 offers were presented on Offer Night, both of them above the asking price. Unfortunately, the seller has a hard number that they need to achieve with this sale in order to move forward, & neither of these offers met it. Now you may say, "well that's the problem right there, it's over-priced"! Except that the most recent comparable sale in the neighbourhood was for $10k MORE than the seller's hard number & that home didn't have as much to offer as this one! It's a head-scratcher!

Of course, we always say that a home is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it, but this one doesn't make sense to me at all...and it's STILL available as I write this! If you're interested in more information, feel free to get in touch! I know what the magic number is, lol ;)

And then there was the one, again in that hot $300-$350k price range, from a couple of months ago. What a case of bad timing! 60 booked showings, gazillions of people through the open house, tons of great feedback & then disaster struck in the form of a hot new listing that stole all the buyers away!

Offer night brought 2 buyers to the table, 1 at below asking price & the other AT asking price. The one at asking price was accepted & what a deal that buyer got, given the fact that it was under-priced in the first place! But then the buyer backed out the following day! What a heartbreaking situation for the sellers! The REALTOR® on the listing side is the hero of this story (and no it's not me, lol) as she worked her butt off to rustle up 3 other offers from buyers who were not successful in purchasing that "hot new listing" & she was able to get a price for her clients that was more in-line with the recent comparable sales! That's the short version of that story, believe it or not, lol!

And there are stories like these ones every day, it's just that I happen to have some inside scoop on these 2 particular ones!

We hear a lot about the "crazy ones" because they make for good conversation (or blog posts, lol)...like the one that sold in Oshawa a couple of weeks ago that was underpriced SO much that it generated 27 offers (that was the last number I heard) & sold for almost DOUBLE the list price (but actually only about $20k'ish above the last comparable sale for that type of property) or the crazy-busy open houses, like mine this past weekend, where we had 75 groups through!

But what we don't hear a lot about are the so-called "failures". And it's not that they're actually failures, don't get me wrong, sometimes it IS a failure...over-reaching on the price, choosing a listing strategy that requires a certain amount of planning & work but not actually doing it etc....but sometimes it's just a matter of things not going according to plan or circumstances beyond your control.

Do you know that it used to takes weeks, if not more to sell a home? In the last buyer's market it took much, much longer than that...sometimes months! Sometimes up to a year! Hard to imagine, right?

As much as everyone says that sellers hold all the power in today's market, they only control the product. There are so many variables that can affect the selling process, some you can prepare for ahead of time, & some you just have to roll with the punches & find a way through the roadblocks that can pop up unexpectedly! Have you heard the expression "the hand that rocks the cradle, is the hand that rules the world"? Well in real estate it's more like "the hand that writes the cheques, is the hand that rules the world"...it's good to remember that so you don't get caught off guard!

Have a fabulous day!