patrick.net

We looked at a house about 3 weeks ago - the asking was $164,000 - short sale.

It was def. on the smaller side, but way cheap for our area and in a decent neighborhood. HOA was $160/mo which we thought was reasonable. Def. rental potential, and we thought it couldn't hurt to look....

Soooo, my wife called the listing agent, and before she could really get two words out of her mouth, the agent says, "we have 5 offers, so if you want the house, you need to make an offer." My wife politely tells her we just want to look at it - listing agent agrees, and sends one of her tool friend/agents to show us the house the next day.

The agent who showed us the property, easily could have been my mother (she had like 30 years on me), but spoke down to me as if she had the ball in her court. What was even funnier was that she drove up in her decked out Cadillac ... 22" chrome ghetto wheels....

SARCASTICALLY she said "we have 3 offers on it - would you like to make one, and who will you be financing with?" (Funny how the number of offers on the property changes, depending on who you talked to...)

I politely said "we will not be financing - if we make an offer, it will be all cash." Immediately her tone of voice changed with me and she went from "mom-mode" to "best friend." Almost begging us to place an offer, because the place was going to sell "ANY SECOND." Anyhow, we thanked her - but told her the place was too small for us.

Three weeks later - after the house should have sold, we get a call from the listing agent, almost begging us to put in an offer. Apparently, they had ONE offer, all cash, for $160k - but upon inspection, the place needed $10k in termite work - and the buyers backed out.

Anyhow, buyers may be playing hardball. A place like this would have sold immediately last year, but here we are, good price, good location, one month on the market, and it didn't sell yet.

Good change buyers may be demanding more and/or are not putting up with the Realtors BS anymore.

Thought I'd share...

#housing