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House "Hunters" Or Freshly Killed Prey?
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2010 Sep 16, 3:30am 19,947 views 52 comments
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If a short sale was involved, it's called "flopping."
I will bet bucks that the r.e. agent knew that there was a higher offer on the table and under the table the agent was receiving a kickback if the owner took the lower priced offer.
Last line in the article...
"So, what’s the recourse for a home seller? Have a trusted real estate professional help you"
Even if you find an honest RE agent, prices are often set by comps, which are peppered with fruadualent inflated prices anyway. When we started to see prices decline due to foreclosures the complaint from RE agents was, FC were 'distorting prices' and should be ignored by buyers. Yes we certainly have a problem that hasnt yet been addressed.
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I was watching an episode of House Hunters while on the ski-climber at 24 Hour Fitness yesterday.
In the episode a couple was looking at a series of homes, in what (I missed the beginning) looked something like Phoenix, AZ. Each home, had the pink stucco exterior that made them seem like slight variations on each other.... slightly bigger bedroom...smaller bathroom.
The couple had a budget and was looking in a certain price range...around $250,000. They had $10,000 saved.
As expected, they liked seeing prices at $210,000 but really wanted the house at $270,000. The went through about 10 houses (maybe more) going through manic waves of elation and rationality.
Almost all the homes seemed to be bank foreclosures that they were bidding on. With each house they liked, the story was the same..."there's another (or 2, or 3) couples...and they've bid full price".
Ok. But the thing is...all of these homes looked like abandoned dumps. The yards were unkempt. The walls were sometimes in the middle of being painted. No refrigerator in one. Of course they were all empty...but more than that, there were no other people around...anywhere! You'd think that if these houses were in such demand...all with multiple bids, that at some point, they might run into another person.
All of this made me think back to when I was trying to buy a used car on one of the "Auto Rows" here in Seattle. As I went from lot to lot, gathering information...I suddenly realized...these guys all know each other! And they knew what cars the other guy had ("oh, yeah, the Mazda that George has had for 2 months, well, ....") Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I had this thought that all the "agents" had this clandestine network so that when a hapless "house hunter" fell into their Mancatcher, they all sent smoke signals on their cell phones to make sure and present all the homes as having multiple bids.
For me, my estimates of these $250,000 homes would probably be around half of that, if there are so many of them, and if they banks are desperate and if the population of Arizona is not growing annually by double digits...
http://www.hgtv.com/house-hunters/show/index.html
#housing