What a market. I’ve never written so many offers and closed so few homes in my entire real estate career. I’ve been at this now for over 20 years and have seen many ups and downs in the Seattle real estate market, but this has been the most challenging time of all.
I’ve been showing homes regularly for the last several weeks to a couple of different well qualified buyers. They have expressed their concerns in concert; “What if I buy a house today and it’s worth 10% less six months from now?
Their approach has been, therefore, to make offers at least 10% below the asking price. This is obviously a tough pill to swallow for the seller; and thereby the stand-off. What on earth is going to break this trend?
Will lower interest rates be the answer? Good grief, they are already in the 5% range. These are great rates. But buyers think they’ll come down lower still; and long as they believe this they’ll continue to sit tight.
Will it be “when they find just the right house”? There is so much inventory out there that there’s at least 20 “right houses” for every buyer. They feel no pressure to act quickly when they find a house they like.
What will it be then? I believe it will be when buyers feel peaceful about their future. They don’t want to step into the same pain that their fellow citizens are experiencing right now. They don’t want to lose hard earned equity and they don’t want to find out that they’ve been laid off after closing on their new home. As long as the national financial news is disastrous, and as long as we see instability, corruption and reckless spending there simply won’t be confidence in the financial stability of our beloved Nation.