there is a "compare offer" tool on zip realty that will tell you what % of homes in a 2 mile radius sold for vs. asking within the last six month. Most of the times I have used it the results show 98-99% of asking. but that is 6 months history, not 1 or 2 months.
A couple notes on this: I'm guessing that calculation is based on the most recent price in the MLS so it won't account for pre-sale prices drops, and does it account for non-sales price incentives (e.g. "we'll pay your closing costs", often 2% or so of the sales price). A house originally listed at $600K, priced down to $550K and sold with seller kicking back $10K for closing costs might show as 100% of asking, but might also reasonably be considered between 2% and 10% off.
The other problem with publicly available MLS data is that there is no way of knowing if a home had been previously listed with a different agent for a different price for a specific period of time at a higher price.
So a home listed at 400,000 could have been previously listed with a different agent for $500,000 or more. The new agent drops the price and it sells relatively fast, so the stats look great, but don't show the bigger picture.
I have been questioning seller incentives for years now, as it pertains to showing an appraiser and a lender how prices have slowly been driven up by including closing costs and downpayment into the price.
The next appraiser (or Realtor doing a CMA) is going to use those homes as closed comparable sales when setting the price.
Appraisers have been pressured to hit the sales price, and with a plethora of comps, no problem. Appraisers and real estate agents doing CMAs do have the opportunity to call the agent on the sold comparable and ask about seller concessions, but that agent has no duty to return those phone calls. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
So this had created a gradual price bubble each time.
When I pointed this out to agents in the classroom, they all stared back with a blank expression. One student even said, "but Jillayne, if we don't put the closing costs and downpayment into the purchase price, I wouldn't have made any money at all last year. Nobody has a downpayment or closing costs. This is what keeps us in business." This was said to me in 2004 in a classroom in Yakima.
Instead of watching Seattle/Bellevue prices, we should all be looking at the outerlying counties first, such as Snohomish and Pierce.
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So a home listed at 400,000 could have been previously listed with a different agent for $500,000 or more. The new agent drops the price and it sells relatively fast, so the stats look great, but don't show the bigger picture.
The next appraiser (or Realtor doing a CMA) is going to use those homes as closed comparable sales when setting the price.
Appraisers have been pressured to hit the sales price, and with a plethora of comps, no problem. Appraisers and real estate agents doing CMAs do have the opportunity to call the agent on the sold comparable and ask about seller concessions, but that agent has no duty to return those phone calls. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
So this had created a gradual price bubble each time.
When I pointed this out to agents in the classroom, they all stared back with a blank expression. One student even said, "but Jillayne, if we don't put the closing costs and downpayment into the purchase price, I wouldn't have made any money at all last year. Nobody has a downpayment or closing costs. This is what keeps us in business." This was said to me in 2004 in a classroom in Yakima.
Instead of watching Seattle/Bellevue prices, we should all be looking at the outerlying counties first, such as Snohomish and Pierce.