New Realtor Tactic: Convince Sellers to Give Up

[The Tim]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

It's enough to make you wonder what skin those two have in the water. A real agent only makes commission when a property sells, so any right thinker would have suggested something along the lines of "drop your price by 20%+ immediately to clear out inventory. It's OK, everyone else will have to do the same and you'll still be able to move up (or down)."

[Fripp]

I noticed the same trend over there (along with Larry's posts becoming more and more incoherent).

It would be interesting to hear if Leanne has been recommending this new strategy to any of her own listings.

[WestSideBilly]

[hesotriflin]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[biliruben]

A number of Realtors are also speculators and landlords. They have a huge advantage in transaction costs and insider info, so that makes sense.

They are doubly leveraged in this circumstance: both wealth and income decline. If RE goes down, their commissions go down, their transactions go down, their equity and borrowing power goes down, and their house-wealth goes down.

I had a bargain hunter friend searching for a deal in the $1m+ segment, who got two houses stolen from under him by Realtors who saw the bargain and used their insider tactics to win the war, offering less.

Dude was steamed.

[Alan]

Buyers are not some organized in some sort of cartel plotting together to get housing prices below the maximum point that are willing to spend.

The call for sellers to stick it to the buyers is a rallying cry to create a cartel of sellers to fight the imagined cartel of buyers. It won't work. There is no way to enforce the cartel so the owners who try to cooperate will just get screwed.

I agree that people who aren't really that interested in selling should probably take their homes off the market.

[deejayoh]

[jon]

Sellers are not organized, but the 6%ers certainly are. If anything, this is them trying to get their clients to take their properties off the market so the realtors can unload their investment properties first.

[cheapseats]

Hey King county homes busted through 13K, at least someones trying to do something about that.

[sorin]

It makes good sense that if you have people who aren't willing to work within the dynamics of a buyers market, getting them to take their houses off the market means a little less distraction for the listings of more motivated sellers. Listings that an agent might make a commission on. The listings from inflexible and unrealistic owners are just a waste of everyone's time.

[Robroy]

[cheapseats]

Where were these realtors during the bubble? I understand that they aren't stupid, they take the money when they can and become a "financial advisor" when their revenue stream is affected, but advising a seller to delist, as a policy that is not seller specific, sounds borderline un-ethical.

What if "bubble heads" led a concerted effort to make offers on homes to tie up realtors, sellers and sales and then backed out repeatedly at the last second, with the intent of driving down asking prices?

I am not saying that is a good idea, I just find it odd what some people who call themselves professionals are willing to say. The one good thing about RCG and the PI blogs is that I definitely know at least a few realtors to cross of my list, as well as some to potentailly add.

[jillayne]

Jon, this is absolutely hilarious:

"Sellers are not organized, but the 6%ers certainly are. If anything, this is them trying to get their clients to take their properties off the market so the realtors can unload their investment properties first."