So I decided to write this as this situation has happened to me twice now this past month.

Situation #1

I show a detached home in South Burnaby, been on the market for 65 days at this point. The listing agent is a busy agent in the area, his assistant's assistant shows up to do the showing, doesn't know anything about the property. This is fine, my buyers like the property and want to make an offer. The place is asking around $1,450,000 and they had dropped the price from $1,550,000 a month earlier. Its a unique property for a few reasons (I won't get in to that). We write an offer for 95.6% of asking price, which we believe is a strong offer, based on other sales and the fact its been on the market for 2 months in the hottest market in a decade. I call the listing agent, lets call him Mr. Busy. Mr Busy does not call me back, so after 2 voicemails, a text and an email, I call Mr Busy's assistants' assistant. She says she will "have him call me back" He never once called me, but rather emailed me back saying he will talk to his sellers about the offer I submitted. A full day goes by, and he texts me saying " We verbally counter you at full price, and change the dates to our prefered dates......let us know!" This, was of course not easy to explain to my buyers. The conversation went like this:

ME- Hey Mr Buyer, looks like we got a counter offer.....verbally......

BUYER- Ummmm ok, I prefer it on paper, but what are the details?

ME- Full price counter, and changed the dates to benefit them

BUYER- But hasen't this been on the market for months? We wrote 96% of asking price....he didn't budge at all??

ME- I agree.....they did not.....

BUYER- So basically he is telling us to go #$% myself

ME- That's an interesting way to put it, hahahaha

BUYER- Let me think about it and get back to you.

Fast forward 4 hours later, I get an email from Mr Busy, "Hi Chad (I didn't change my name to Chad, in case you are wondering) I am gettting another offer for XYZ street in Burnaby.......does your client want to increase their offer"

ME- No they do not, they are no longer interested, good luck with your other offer.

MR Busy- Blah Blah Blah, I can't believe you thought you were going to get the property for 96% of asking price in this market, we already dropped the price 100k a month ago, BLAH BLAH BLAH.....

ME- Have a nice day. (At least this is how I remember my response)

3 Weeks later, I just looked and the property is still on the market. I guess his "other offer" (notice how I used the parenthesis when I typed "other offer") didn't pan out. Perhaps they too were not pleased with a full price counter back on a stale listing. Perhaps there was no other offer and he just wanted to put pressure on us to increase. Either way, they are still listed, and my clients have purchased elsewhere.

Situation #2

I show another home in South Burnaby to different buyers. Beautiful home, asking just over 2 Million dollars. Client likes it, we write an offer. We write 98% of asking price. Property has been on the market for 45 days at this point. Listing agent comes back saying "He is not in a hurry to sell, he has lots of money...."

ME- This offer is more than I think the home is worth, but my Buyers wanted to offer this price...

LISTING AGENT- Can you get them to full price?

ME- If you take this offer, as-is, you will be the HIGHEST sale for a home in this area EVER. I am already cringing about having my name attached to that. No home this size/age has ever broken 2M in this area. I'll tell you what, if you can show me a single home nearby that sold for over 2M, I'll fight to get you over that.

LISTING AGENT- I don't know about other sales, this is the price he wants.

ME (in my head) - I want unicorns, a personal chef, a girlfriend that lets me play xbox all day, and a toilet made of solid gold.

ME (verbally)- Let me know if Seller accepts.

Fast forward 6 hours, he calls me and says "We are getting another offer, so if you want it, you have to pay the price" I call my clients, they respectfully decline (again this is how I remember it going) and we move on, wishing him luck with his "other offer" (notice those parenthesis again?). We move on, my Buyers buy something else. 2 days later, LISTING AGENT calls me back asking "can we close your deal? I think I can get him to come around BLAH BLAH BLAH....." I tell him they moved on, and ask "what about your other offer?" He keeps ducking the question. Buh Bye!

2 weeks later, I just looked, this home is still on the market.

Moral of my story, Sellers and their agents alike that get greedy, sometimes this can backfire. In the above cases we wrote 96% and 98% of askig price, both countered with full price after being on the market for months. So turning those offers down, is surely going to get them less than 96%/98%. The longer they sit on the market, the more people that are thinking "What's wrong with this place?" "If nobody else is willing to pay this price, why should I?"

My 2 cents for the day

Paul

The other day, my girlfriend sent me a link to an article about housing in Vancouver, and her text said "wow". The article was from a popular news source locally and the title read "Vancouver home sales saw 40% increase for November". Let me preface by saying my Girlfriend is a university educated, smart woman with a good attention to detail. When I clicked on the article I can see where the mistake was. Its the same mistake that I hear probably once a month (usually after the Real Estate Board releases their monthly stats) Now the market is indeed white hot, but when most people read this headline they are thinking "my 1 million dollar home is now worth 1.4 million dollars" (40%). Others are saying "I can't believe homes went up that much in November???. There are 2 problems here, and the news outlets do this either knowingly, or unknowingly, if I were a betting man, I would say knowingly. 

1) The value of homes did not increase 40%, the amount of transactions increased 40%. The 1 million dollar house is not worth 1.4 million dollars, rather instead of 5,000 home sales in a month, there were 7,000 sales. 

2) The headline says "increase for November" , but what they really mean is year over year, November 2014 to November 2015. That's a years worth of increase, not a months worth as the headline suggests. They failed to mention that from October to November there was actually a decrease of 3.3%. 

It would be nice to see news reports use accurate, easy to understand stats, but those don't get clicks/views. Something that never gets talked about is absorption which is the main statistic in determining if we are in a Buyers/Sellers/Balanced market. The amount of homes listed per month vs the amount of homes sold. 

Stats are easy to skew, and don't get me wrong we saw HUGE gains in value this year. 18% increase in value in Greater Vancouver is amazing, but its less than half of what some articles will have you believe. Its also important to get localized info. For example when someone says "Maple Ridge is really booming...." They fail to mention, yes, detached homes in maple ridge have increased 11% in value in 1 year, but apartments have actually decreased in value 1.4%. (yes it is possible for real estate to not always increase)

Point of my story is, talk to your local Realtor to find out exactly what is going on in your area, for your specific home type. 

Paul