Real Estate...

I'm fascinated by real estate. Have been for months on end now. We've been looking since we moved to New Paltz last July. No luck. Prices were outrageous, but alas, New Paltz is seeing a decline in housing prices. Houses listed for $489K are now listed for $439K. One example is the person who listed her house For Sale By Owner (4bedroom, 2,800 sq, 2 1/2 bath, 2 year old colonial listed for $549K although other comps in the area were 100G's lower) has finally woken up and listed her abode with a realtor for $510G’s. Nice.
My favorite is the 3 bedroom "gentlemen's farm" originally listed in 5/05 for $899K. As of December of 06 it was down to $775K. It's now off the market. It’s gone through two realtors and countless open houses. No luck. I bet it will come back in 30 days with a new realtor and a brand new lower price of about $725G’s. I’ll bet the listing agent refused to lower the price and lost the listing. Who drops the price of their home over 100 thousand dollars? I think we're going to be renting for a little while longer.

The house that we made an offer on last August (the picture above) is still on the market. Original listing price was $465K. We offered $450K and were told by the listing agent that it was a “low ball offer.” 97% of asking price is low ball? I said to David, no, I swore to David that I wouldn’t buy that house if it was the last home for sale in all of Newburgh, New York. Gleefully, yes, gleefully, I watched as they lowered the price to $449K this past December. Funny thing is that the sellers probably feel that they ate some equity. Want some ketchup with that? If they paid 200Gs for the house 12 years ago they are lucky. Anything over 250G’s for them is sheer profit so “eating” 15G’s is wrong? No. It’s not.

Am I bitter? Yes. I am. Because it’s sheer greed. We sold or home on Long Island last year and made nearly 200G’s in profit and that was after reducing the price by 10%. We didn’t “eat” anything; we had 200G’s in equity. Sellers need to change their viewpoint as they aren’t “eating” or “losing” anything.