Buying and Selling: December 2006 Archives

That's one of the questions I've been asked, and it deserves an answer. Know that there is some flexibility to the answer, as there are embedded trade offs. You don't need as much of an income, or as high of a credit score, if you have a down payment. A sufficiently high credit score can also mean that you can afford a more expensive property, as higher credit scores get better interest rates, and therefore, lower payments for the same property. On the flip side, if you have monthly bills that consume a large amount of your income, you cannot afford to pay as much for a property. The same applies if you cannot prove sufficient income via the traditional means of w-2s or income tax forms, as the alternative loan forms do not give rates as good. Finally, most of this only applies if you want or need a loan. If you intend to pay with cash, you can buy anything legal that you desire with your cash, and the hurdles become much smaller.



The first thing any buyers need if they want a loan for the property is a source of income. If you want a loan, you've got to have money coming in from somewhere to make the payments. Preferably, it's a documentable, regular source of income, such as paychecks or income from a business on which you report taxable income. I suppose I should mention that tax cheats have difficulty getting good quality home loans, because I have dealt with a few people I suspect of that. Don't worry, I'm not an IRS employee and I won't turn you in. But all lenders must report loan transactions, and every real estate transaction is a matter of public record. If you make a major purchase or take out a major loan, the IRS can take an interest in you. Just sayin'.



You income, together with whatever amount you have for a down payment, gives you a budget for a property. If your credit score is not horrible, a down payment is optional, but you will need at least a couple thousand for a good faith deposit, and probably another thousand at least for appraisal, inspections, and miscellaneous stuff. The once-upon-a-time rule of thumb about a 2% earnest money deposit has long gone by the wayside, but a good deposit is often evidence that you are serious about your ability to consummate the deal, and might get you a lower price in negotiations. I will argue against my listing clients accepting any offer, no matter how good, without a deposit, and most sane real estate agents agree with me.



Regarding the down payment, it may be optional, but at least a certain amount is a good option if you have it. In order to make a difference on the terms of your loan, the required down payment generally goes in increments of 5%. 5% will get you better terms than you would get for no deposit, 10% will get you better terms than 5%, 15% better than 10%.



If you want to take advantage of a governmental first time buyer assistance program, either the Mortgage Credit Certificate or a locally based buyer assistance program, you need to be very careful about staying within what you can prove you can afford via tax forms. Stated Income, or documenting your income via bank statements, is not an option on any of those programs. Using creative financing options, such as negative amortization loans, with such programs is similarly forbidden. First time assistance programs are not designed to encourage irresponsibly buying a more expensive property than you can afford; they are designed to help you stretch what you can afford a little further. Know what you can afford in terms of sales price, because agents and loan officers can too easily manipulate payment quotations. Rules of thumb (2.5 times income, four times income, whatever) are worthless. This article will help you compute what you can afford, once you know the approximate rates for current thirty year fixed rate loans.



You will need to be able to document a two year history of housing payments. Since you have never bought before, this means rent. No fun to have had to enrich someone else for a couple of years, but there are valid reasons why lenders require a history of regular housing payments on time. If you can document that you've been paying regular rent to your parents, grandparents, or what have you, that can count, although lenders will usually ask for copies of the canceled checks rather than accepting their word for it.



You will also need a history of credit payments. Mortgage lenders want to see evidence that you have the habit of paying your debts on time regularly. The usual criteria is three total lines of credit, one open for at least 24 months, the other two for at least six months. These can be revolving lines of credit such as credit cards, or installment debt such as car payments. Note that they do not necessarily have to still be open, but whatever balances and monthly payments you still have will be counted against your debt to income ratio.



Also, you generally need at least two open lines of credit in order to have credit scores reported by the major credit bureaus. Ideal is two long term credit cards with very small balances. You will need an appropriate credit score for what you are trying to do. What score is sufficient will depend upon the exact characteristics of your transaction. For 100% financing under full documentation, a credit score of 580 is generally sufficient. Better scores will lower your rate, and therefore your payments, but the best thing that can be said about a 580 credit score is that it isn't putrid.



The last things I will mention that will stand you in good stead are also optional: An educated layperson's knowledge of the process (I would like to think being a regular reader here will help with that), a investigative attitude, and the willingness to shop effectively for services, both loan and real estate.



Caveat Emptor

UPDATED here

Prices are down 20% locally to me. It is possible, even likely, that prices may come down further. But right now, buyers have more power to make the deal they want than they will again for the next ten years. Even the ugliest buyer is looking very attractive right now. When more people come off the sidelines and are willing to buy, buyers are going to have a lot less power.



For instance, right now seller carry-backs are practically routine. People with truly putrid credit are able to leverage this fact into 100 percent financing. Sellers don't want to do carry-backs, ever! They want their cash, not a continued interest in the property, and particularly not from someone with putrid credit who can't get banks to lend that much! But the facts of the market are giving buyers the leverage to get that. Later on, when more buyers come off the sidelines, sellers will tell such buyers to take a hike.



If it looks like I'm telling you that now is the time for buyers to get off the sidelines because nobody else is willing, you've got the first piece of the puzzle.



The second piece of the puzzle is that those sellers who don't have to sell are figuring out that now is a lousy time to sell. Total local market inventory is down by 2000 units since the beginning of December, and 8000 units since the end of summer. People rented them out and took them off the market. In my office, various agents have made at least a dozen offers where the sellers took them off the market and rented them out instead. It's great for those sellers who have that option, but what about those sellers who do not?



The answer is that those properties still on the market is the ones that have to sell. They can't rent it out for enough to cover the mortgage, even if they add hundreds of dollars cash to it every month, and how many people want to add hundreds of dollars cash every month to a mortgage that they couldn't afford in the first place? Many of them have negative amortization loans that they couldn't afford, while others have 2/28 Interest Only loans where they could barely afford the interest only short term payment, and now the interest only period is over, the rate adjusted upwards, and there's no way they can afford it, as most of those payments increase by forty percent or more. The end result of either is pretty much the same as when Wile E. Coyote looks down. Bye bye.



So what does this all mean? Let's leave aside the fact that the ratio of sellers to buyer spiked to 55:1, as this was Christmas week. But the week before, the ratio was 45:1, and I'm pretty sure that's where it's going to be back to in a couple of weeks. Since January 1st, 2006, 30,413 properties have sold while 46,274 have failed to sell and 17,026 are still on the market. This means that for all properties listed for sale on the local market, there is only about a forty percent chance that any given property sold at all (30413/30413+46274=0.3966).



Now obviously, it's not pure chance as to who sold and who didn't. Attractive properties correctly priced did fairly well, but even there, the point of having some nice feature like hardwood floors wasn't that you could therefore sell the property for $25,000 more than the one down the street with carpet over a slab - it was the fact that the property with hardwood floors sold, where the one with carpet over a concrete slab is still sitting on the market, if not expired.



Most important of all attributes in getting a property sold is the seller's attitude. In a market like this, the seller who has made up their mind that they are going to get every last penny out of the house is wasting their time. $25k for the hardwood floors, $15k for the marble in the bathroom, $15k for the whirlpool spa? Not going to happen. It's okay if they can last until the next seller's market, but we've already established that the ones on the market now can not. What's going to get that property sold is the seller who swallows their ego and realizes that the odds of a better offer are against them, and decides to accept the offer that's the same or even less than the last property that sold in the neighborhood, even if it wasn't quite so blinged out as theirs. They know that the buyers out there now are bottom feeders looking for the best possible bargain, and they can spend their own weekends putting in the hardwood floors, the marble in the bathroom, and save themselves a lot of money doing so. If your house has the whirlpool spa, that might draw the offer where the property without doesn't get one, but they're not going to offer $15,000 more for it. They're going to offer the same price, because they'd rather have the house with the bling than without, but they're not willing to pay significantly more for it. Gone is the market where even the most marginal improvements meant you could expect to get more for the property. It might come back again, but in the mean time, the home improvement companies pushing the consumer to improve their homes based upon investment return are referring to a market that no longer exists. Double paned windows? Nice, and nice that I'll save some money off the heating bill also. But it's not worth $20,000 to cut your heating bill from $250 to $160 per month. The opportunity cost of that money is over twice the return, and a competently advised buyer knows it.



The point of all of this is that if one seller won't do what is necessary to deal with you as a potential buyer, the next one over will. If they don't, they don't sell, simple as that. Furthermore, with as many properties as are on the market for as few buyers as there are, amenities are not bringing increased sales prices like they were a couple years ago. They're back to the situation as it was before that seller's market, where the nice feature was the one that drew the offer in the first place, but the buyers are not offering enough extra to recover whatever the cost of that feature was. This has some really depressing implications for those who bought blinged out developer property, but that's the way it is right now. For buyers, research and patience and the willingness to walk away are paying major dividends right now, as is the willingness to be in the market at all. There are a lot of desperate sellers out there right now, and if you wait until prices are increasing again, you will have missed the best time to buy.



Caveat Emptor

(The original was posted March 31, 2006. This is an updated version)



Doing my workout this morning I asked myself what's next for the real estate market.



The state of the market here locally is that prices are and have been in decline. The Association of Realtors even finally admitted it last summer. They are still hiding how far that prices have declined, but that is to be expected, stupid as it may be.



What comes next? I originally said increased defaults, as short term loans come up for adjustment and people are unable to make the payments, as I had previously said any number of times, and unable to refinance because they owe more than the property is worth. Short sales also increase, as people try to just get out. More Notices of Default means more trustee sales, as well. If the property sells at auction, somebody probably got a bargain. If it doesn't, the lien holder owns it (subject to senior liens) and that may be even better if they are willing to admit reality, which some are and some are not. The phenomenon I've been encountering is that the servicer overseeing the foreclosure is often the original lender who approved this loan in the first place, then sold the right to receive payments. They take less than the amount of the loan, so that the company with the actual right to receive payments takes a loss, and they get sued. So they are playing the same game as the old joke with the punchline, "A lot may happen in a year. I may die, the king may die. And maybe the horse will learn to sing." A lot of the asset managers I've tried to deal with are freshly minted MBAs, twenty-three years old and no experience in the real estate market. Their entire adult lives, they have been hearing about how real estate appreciates twenty percent per year. They think if they stonewall hard enough, people will offer more than the property is worth. Not. Gonna. Happen.



All of these are happening already. When I wrote the original, daily foreclosure lists had more than doubled locally from a year prior, and the levels have continued to build. Trustee Sales are up, and so are REO's (Real Estate Owned by those who were originally lien holders). Check, check, and check. All about as surprising as gravity. What I'm trying for here is at least one prediction that has not already come true.



Rates have been rising of late, but there is a limit as to how far they are likely to go, if only because Bernanke and company are very shortly going to have irrefutable evidence of all of the above stuff nationwide (What did I tell you? They stopped raising rates in the summer). A nationwide economy has a lot of something analogous to inertia. Takes a while to move things in the direction you want them to go. More time, and more effort, than most folks, particularly bankers running our money supply, are likely to realize and sit still for without further pushing, which they have done a bit too much of, in my opinion, by about one full percent on the overnight funds rate. Once things get going in the direction that the Fed has been pushing them for the last two years, they are similarly going to have a lot of momentum built up. Bond investors are going to dry up at attractive rates, and Sarbanes Oxley or no, you're going to see private companies going public again because it's the only way they can raise capital at attractive prices, and the flow of public companies going private is likely to mostly stop. Hard to think of Sarbanes-Oxley as a brake upon economic activity, but in the short term, that's what it's likely to prove. CEOs and CFOs are still not used to the idea of personal responsibility for corporate activity, and while the cost of private capital is even vaguely competitive with public, private will be their choice. It's going to take a while for countervailing forces to come into play. This is still ongoing. The newer factor that's come into play is that the rest of the world may have finally woken up to how shaky the entire US economy is, with foreign investment in our debt keeping the cost of borrowing as low as it was (the law of supply and demand is always in force, even if it does take a while to work), and the dollar has slipped some in recent weeks, with the trailing expectation being that borrowing capital is going to become more expensive, and therefore, public offerings more lucrative.



When bond rates rise, so do mortgage rates, and mortgage consumers don't have the option of moving back to public offerings of stock. When mortgage rates rise, and people can only afford the same payments, prices fall, further exacerbating the price fall that's already happening. I actually think that my local market (San Diego) has seen most of the depreciation it is likely to, due to constricted supplies of housing and the fact that it is not the entire supply of housing, but only those intending to buy or sell who are influenced by the sales market. For those who don't want to buy, or those who don't want to or have sell, the market is not very relevant. They've got their property already. Furthermore, there is a large amount of pent up demand, for who want to buy, but are frustrated by market conditions or waiting for market conditions to improve. Let their perceptions of the market change, and they're going to be back in the market.



Lenders are already between a rock and a hard place to a much larger extent even than nine months ago, and it's going to get worse as those who were sold too much house, or took too much money out of their equity, continue to experience difficulty. Keep in mind also that aggregated mortgage bonds are an attractive investment because of their historical level of security, and even that's going to be compromised to a certain extent, and rates are going to rise further if for no other reason than that is what the money costs. Low supply and high demand. I expect rates on A paper thirty year fixed rate home loans to stabilize somewhere around seven percent, at least for a while. Shorter term fixed rates will be cheaper once the yield curve normalizes, and indeed, the 5/1 ARM is starting to be noticeably cheaper than the thirty year fixed rate loan again, if not nearly so wide as it usually is. Given the prices things have sold at in highly appreciated markets, this is likely to permanently popularize medium term hybrid ARMs, as saving one percent in interest on $500,000 is well worth the cost of refinancing every few years, and people are refinancing every two years on average anyway. Two and three years fixed is really too short for most folks, but five is probably more than fine.



Here's another newsflash. I'm not going out very far on a limb here, but a three bedroom single family residence in a reasonable neighborhood here locally is likely never to drop back into the sub $300,000 range again. I'd bet serious money it's not going below $250,000. That's what I said nine months ago, and the bet is looking more solid now than it was then. Yes, the market got badly overheated - but not that badly overheated. Furthermore, if past Southern California history is any guide, we'll lose about 30 percent of peak value, and then start going back up again. No fun if you're a semi-skilled worker trying to raise a family, but the most likely scenario nonetheless.



Now what's going to happen to the people who have bought highly appreciated properties who can actually make the payments? Well, if prices fall, they can't sell for what they bought for until they recover. They don't want to do that. But they don't want to be in a negative cash flow situation, where the rent they get from the property doesn't cover their expenses, if they can avoid it. They definitely don't want to be in that situation to a larger extent than they can avoid. A $500,000 purchase with a 6 percent first and 10 percent second yields principle and interest payments of $3276, plus property taxes of $520 and insurance costs of $120 per month, means that the owner is out $3916 per month without any repairs or management expense. A monthly rental of $1900 isn't going to cover that. A monthly rental of $2500 isn't going to cover that. This is starting to put more upwards pressure on rental rates. $2500 is the entire gross monthly income of someone making $14.75 per hour, by the way. But the people feeding the mortgage alligator don't really care, all they know is that they have to pay the bank so much per month, and set aside so much for the state and the insurance company. This is also going to put upwards pressure on wages, and therefore prices, as people have to make more to be able to afford living here, or anywhere else that got this highly appreciated. Inflation kicks into higher gear, which puts more upwards pressure on interest rates. Vicious cycle.



And this phenomenon is going to be part of what eventually helps prices make a comeback. If somebody is feeding the landlord $3000 per month, they're going to be more amenable to paying it to the bank instead. Especially since they get tax breaks, and most especially because when you buy the property you intend to live in, you take your monthly cost of housing out of the column that says "what the market will bear," which is subject to changes - and usually increases - and put it into the column that says "this is under my control." If you buy with a sustainable loan, your monthly payment may be higher right now, but you are putting it under your control forever.



(It is to be noted that even if that $500,000 property loses $150,000 in value the day after you buy it, historical 7 percent per year increases will have you back in the black in about five years, and ahead of a market return on the rent you would have saved in about ten. Thirty years down the line, your net benefit from the purchase as opposed to invest the extra money over the cost of renting and investing the excess in the stock market, will be somewhere between $800,000 to $1,000,000. An almost irrefutable argument in favor of buying a home, if you plan to live there a while. Yeah, it's no fun being upside down while it happens. But the eventual payoff isn't exactly chump change, even by the projected standards of thirty years from now.)



Caveat Emptor

First of all I love the information on the site. I've done some research into buying a home and have talked to several people who have bought homes and I can never believe the stories I've heard. My response is always "why didn't you just walk out . . it's only a $2000 deposit . . . you're paying that in the first year with the difference in interest you are getting now" but after reading your site it seems to me you would have to get lucky to find a good mortgage broker and get a good loan where what you are told is what you get. The rule seems to be if you want a house "getting screwed" is just a part of the process. In this market (DELETED) you would need to be especially lucky to find someone who is willing to be honest . . . it's a risk and, again, it seems to me being honest is will just lead all clients to the fibbers who, frankly, tell people what they want to hear.

Anyway, back in May 2003 I was looking for a house and a friend of mine was looking to invest $70,000 (that he got from another land sale) so he wouldn't have to pay taxes on it. We ended up buying a $150,000 home where I live now. By "we", I mean "he" because my name couldn't be on the loan for tax purposes (at least that's what they told us . . . it's hard to get good information). And, I know, I know, I have no rights and he can do whatever he wants and I understand that. If anything I've had a place to live where the rent was relatively low (but it sucks that I didn't get a house when they were affordable). I've been living in this house and paying the mortgage for more than 3 years now. I'm in a much better financial situation now and I'd like to buy the house from him. He also has another $70,000 from another land sale (I'm not sure of the details but suffice to say he is thinking about paying off the mortgage). Anyway, once all this happens I want to buy the house from him at a price way below market (similar houses are now around $300,000 but there is no way I'm paying $300,000 when I could have gotten it for $150,000 when I moved in). My question is: can a seller also be a lender? Where do I start? I've talked to a few people and they won't touch it . . . in fact, they have no advice whatsoever beside for me to move out and get my own house (which they would be happy to help me with). What are the tax implications of all this?

Thanks again.

If it was inevitable that you would get screwed as part of doing a real estate transaction, most of the information on this website would be useless and pointless. Furthermore, if it was inevitable, I'm not certain it would be appropriate to call it "getting screwed," if it happened on every transaction. What I'm trying to do here is give folks the tools to get correct relevant information, make rational informed choices, find honest competent service providers (it is not as difficult as I may make it seem sometimes, but neither is it easy!), and in general have a better outcome, which is the target you really want to hit. How much effort you want to spend is up to the individual reader. If you want to do only the easiest and most basic items, it should still make a significant difference. If you want to go whole hog, you should see much larger benefits.

Now, as to your specific situation, here are the issues I see:

First off, I have never heard of a situation where you cannot be on the title "for tax purposes." The only tax purposes that would serve is allowing the other person to get the entire deduction, which he would anyway from being the only person on the loan. As soon as the loan is recorded, there is no reason why there could not have been a quitclaim from him to him and you (in whatever manner you desired to hold it, most likely tenants in common in this case). This would have started the clock on having you on title, and since you cannot refinance for cash out within six months of having your name put on title via quitclaim, this constrains your options as well as putting you at your friend's mercy. You may have been paying the mortgage, but even if you can prove it this is unlikely to give you any legal rights if your friend decides not to play it straight.

The next issue, relatively minor, is that you have no verifiable history of paying either rent or mortgage payments at this point. Those checks you have been writing to pay the mortgage in your friend's name? Well, that mortgage is being reported as paid, but your name is not on it. Rent? Not there either.

However, assuming this really is a friend who intends to play it straight with you, this situation is very workable. If it was someone who wanted to work you over, you would be well and truly hosed. Now, you bought for $150,000, of which your friend furnished $70k. The loan for the remainder that you have been paying for sure looks like your contribution to me! By my reading, this makes him approximately 7/15ths owner, and you 8/15ths, but if your friend has been playing it straight, he's done you a pretty big favor not just by tying up his money in the down payment, but by allowing his credit to be used for your loan. This has effects on his debt to income ratio if he wants another loan, among other things. I wouldn't mind ceding him a larger share of ownership in your case.

Whatever the amounts of ownership you agree upon, however, you are also going to need to agree on a method for valuation. I'd probably agree to something like the average of a Comparative Market Analysis of sold properties in your area, and an appraisal. Appraisals are not what you could get on the market in the current conditions, and don't try to think that they are, but both measurements can be manipulated. Pay for each of them in equal shares. As compared to each of your investments, it's small potatoes, and a worthwhile guard.

You have an agreed valuation, and an agreed upon share of ownership. Out of that, you currently have a loan on your share, but that should probably be your issue, not the partnership's. So from that, you can figure what your friend's current share of ownership is, and therefore what he is due upon buy out. You should still have a pretty good ownership equity, roughly $80,000 by the rough amounts and ownership shares in the previous paragraph. So you need to come up with about $80,000 to pay off the current loan, plus about $140,000 (again, by the computations as to ownership share above, subject to revision per your agreement) to pay off your friend. Total owed: $220,000.

Now, your friend actually want to go from owner to lender, and I don't know of anything wrong with that, although in all truth I've never encountered it before in this context (seller carrybacks happen all the time in this market). Furthermore, he wants to invest an additional $70,000 in being the lender. Whereas this will not qualify for 1031 tax deferred treatment as far as I can see (consult a tax professional), this means you are going to have two loans on the property, one from a regular lender, and one from your friend. The specifics of this are difficult to see without more information, and shopping your situation around (I'm not licensed in your state, so I can't put my wholesalers through that for no potential pay off!). It could well be that your friend's loan ends up in second position, but it strikes me as more likely appropriate for a first, as the guidelines for Home Equity Loans and Home Equity Lines of Credit are more likely to have this whole situation be acceptable to your lender for the balance.

Now, as to the structure of the transaction, it's going to look like a sale, but don't expect real estate agents to want to work through that without a commission, which you are probably not going to want to pay, because all of the hard work to the transaction is kind of irrelevant in your case. On the other hand, good loan officers do these all the time. However, the commission structure for Home Equity Loans and Lines of Credit leaves them not making a whole lot of money unless you agree to pay them a flat fee for going through all of this, and for all the times I tell people that transactions aren't as difficult as some loan providers would have you believe, this is a very difficult transaction. I normally work on less than one point of total compensation for loans but I'd probably want to see about $6000 in order to put this transaction through, and that's if everything else is perfect. I don't know about your state's predatory lending law (most states have one, limiting total loan costs to a certain percentage of the loan), which may well prevent them from getting paid enough to make the transaction worthwhile for them. By comparison, on a loan of about $80,000 plus transaction costs, which is what the computations above suggest, California's predatory lending law limits total cost of the loan (and also total lender compensation via another law) to $4800. In most cases, direct lenders can basically ignore this by jacking the rate up so that they can sell the loan for more on the secondary market, but brokers cannot. And whereas that's way more than plenty in most situations, in this case it is not.

The reason why I'd want that much money is that, on top of everything else, this is a related party transaction. You are effectively selling from a partnership to one of the partners. That is going to mandate shopping lenders not only for price, but for willingness to do the transaction based upon the situation. We're going to need a very flexible lender, probably sub-prime. A paper Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac is right out. We are going to have to document an awful lot of stuff, and there are a number of points on which the loan can fall apart. You're also probably going to want this to be a short term loan without a pre-payment penalty, so that you can refinance after you've been on title six months or so, because you'll be able to get a better rate then (unless rates have skyrocketed). All this stuff adds to the complexity, and whether the loan will get funded or not is not something I can control by paying attention to underwriting guidelines like I can in other cases. This requires a lender who's willing to issue some waivers and exceptions, and I might have to submit this loan several times to different lenders over a period of months before it actually funds. That's probably the reason nobody wants it: They can't get paid enough to make it worthwhile. The predatory lending law may have good intentions, but in this particular case it's making life difficult for the consumer because brokers can't get paid enough to make it worth their while, and any given direct lender (especially the ones that consumers see, which tend strongly toward the high quality cookie cutter loan) is unlikely to have sufficiently flexible guidelines. You could go to a hard money lender, of course, but those rates are about fourteen percent or so, which causes most consumers to say, "Never mind!"

There is one other alternative. He could use that cash to buy you out, at which point he is left with basically his current loan, and I think this might even qualify for 1031 deferral (but consult a qualified tax professional before doing anything). If he can't rent it out for enough to have a positive cash flow under those circumstances, something is very badly wrong. He verifies that you've been paying rent/mortgage/whatever, and away you go with $70,000 or so in your pocket and all the leverage a qualified buyer has in a very strong buyer's market, and yours becomes a very easy transaction. I think you could do very well for yourself, given what little I know of your particular market at this point in time.

Caveat Emptor

UPDATED here

This email exchange is worth another article on a different subject. Everything down to "Afterwards" is a straight out of the email except that I deleted any information that might identify a particular individual or company.

I am currently working with a coworker with no agreement. However, she has offered to rebate 50% of her commission. Are you negotiable with your commission?



I am very ready to buy a place at a bargain or discounted price. I have been pre approved by DELETED for $550 but I do not want to spend more than $525, preferably around the $450 range.



I have sufficient liquid funds for 10% down and have an excellent credit score...score 3 months ago was 752.



Let me know.

I do have lower cost packages for when you do part of the work, starting with finding the property.



When I find the property, I retain the entire commission.



Yes, getting half the commission back is cool with most folks. But consider: Did your current agent find you something like this? Does she spend enough time shopping the market that she even knows what is and is not a bargain, or does she just say "Here is the living room."? What value is she providing you? If the answer is, "not much," then no wonder she's willing to rebate half the commission! As far as she's concerned, the half she does keep is free money for going around and looking with you. My goal is that my clients end up with at least 10% they would not have had without me - either a better property for the same money, or the same value property for a lower price, or some combination of the two. Now, if getting half of a two point five percent commission via rebate sounds better than saving 10% of the value of the property, by all means keep doing what you are doing. If getting a property that is worth more, or paying less for the same property, is what you are after, you need someone who is likely to deliver that.



Yes, I'm one of the deepest loan discounters there is. That's because a loan is a loan is a loan, as long as it's on the same terms. A thirty year fixed from National Megabank is the same loan as a thirty year fixed from the Bank of Nowhere in Particular, provided the rate, costs, and terms are the same. Only difference is who you make the check out to.



No two properties are alike. Especially in the current market, the difference between shopping smart and not doing so is tens of thousands of dollars, far more than a commission rebate. I don't rebate buyer's commissions because I provide more than that in value.



Now, I've got some bargains I've found. If you'd like to work with me and get shown these bargains, or have me go looking for bargains specifically for you, give me a call and let's make an appointment to meet and get my contract signed. It's non-exclusive, so if you don't like what I find for you, you're free to stop at any time and go work with someone else. If I don't perform, as in find the property you want, I get nothing. I put a lot of work into every client or prospect I work with, with the idea of getting them a better bargain. I'm confident enough of my abilities that I don't need to tie you to me exclusively. But you do get what you pay for. If you want a Yugo agent that breaks down in the middle of the transaction and leaves you stranded, that's no skin off my nose, but you are not the client I'm looking for and the bargains I find are for my clients.



Consider that your boss could probably hire other people to do your job more cheaply, but his additional investment in you probably makes him more money than that cheap replacement worker would save, and that's same reason is why I am worthy of my pay.



By those characteristics, you are a very qualified buyer. You should be working with someone who knows how to use that as leverage to get you a better bargain.



Or you can pay full price for a mediocre property, and console yourself with 1.25%.



If you decide you would rather have the real bargain, here I am, ready to go to work for you.

It may be true of what you are saying, however, if you want to win over prospects....you are going to have to change the tone of your communication. You come across very demeaning. Even if you were giving your services away free...I wouldn't be interested.

I took the time to explain the situation to you, rather than a flat answer. That's just a small taste of the value I provide. I am paid to be the expert, and I earn my pay. If you are an expert, you don't need me. If you don't know about all the stuff you don't know about and are stuck in denial about "Agents don't even need a college degree!", you won't see the value of a real expert - which is part of the point of what I wrote. Believe it or not, there are clients a good agent does not want, and you appear to be one of them by your response.



If all you're interested in is that rebate, that's fine with me - I am not looking for penny-wise and pound-foolish clients. I am looking for people who understand and are willing to pay for value when they find it, in order to save more money in the long term. But if you won't pay for value, don't be surprised when you don't get it. If you don't believe skill makes a difference, by all means go with the commission rebater.



Good bye and good luck.

You are an idiot. And I am going to report to the board.



There are plenty of agents that want my business. I haven't even tried to contact any agents yet.



You are the one that needs the good luck.



NOW GET LOST!

Afterwards: This guy is working with a weekend agent who isn't good enough or confident enough to quit her real job on the largest transaction of his life. No wonder he doesn't realize what a difference a good buyer's agent can make! Furthermore, it's highly unlikely that working forty hours per week somewhere else, she has the time, energy, and inclination to keep up with the market and its changes, let alone screen out properties that aren't worth the client's time. Value provided? Letting him into the property and saying, "Here is the kitchen. Here is the living room." Most people really can figure that out for themselves. Improvement in outcome over just doing something incredibly stupid and calling the listing agents? I can't see that there is likely to be any.



Now this guy was hoping I'd cave on my commission, and it's okay to ask. It's not okay to get upset when someone won't. It's counterproductive to get upset and claim I'm being "demeaning," by explaining to him what he plainly had not considered, that the value provided by a good agent far exceeds the commission rebate. He probably thought that that was "hard negotiating," not understanding that he had marked himself as someone that cannot be dealt with on the basis of mutual profitability, both of us coming out of the exchange better than we otherwise would have. If you don't understand that there is a problem or challenge, you are unlikely to understand the solution. On paper, the Yugo looks like a good idea. But once you deal with one, you know it's no bargain. Maintenance, reliability, performance, noise, lack of room, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I see a lot more original VWs on the road, marketed to the same demographic over twenty years earlier, than I do Yugos. Problems in real estate transactions happen, and they're often much better buried than anything purely mechanical. Furthermore, there's no real "lemon law" equivalent in real estate, and if you fail to deal with the issue at the proper time - most preferably, before it's a problem at all - it's far more costly to go back and fix. You saved $4000 on agent commission! Yay! You bought the wrong property, paid too much, can't afford necessary repairs, and have to sell at a huge loss and pay bigger commissions out of that than the person who sold you the property did? Not so good. Definitely not so good. Not to mention that with the prices of real estate being what they are, anything you "saved" in compensating the person who is supposed to be the expert on your side is likely to be lost several times over because the person who will work cheaper isn't worth as much.



In certain quarters, it's practically an offense against humanity to claim that you provide more value than another agent might, but it is nonetheless true that some agents provide more value than others. Get offended if you want. It makes zero difference to the facts. It is more constructive to employ techniques to find those agents who provide more value. Agents need to know the market segment they are serving, and this person is not part of mine. My business model does not permit me to do business with this sort of client and stay in business. You want cheap service with a commission rebate? The weekend agent is the way to go, not me, however much it might anger you to be told so. You want someone who is actually going to find you a better property at a better price, and provide more leverage in negotiations? You may be the client I'm looking for, and the discounter with the commission rebate is as inappropriate for you as an agent as I am for his ideal client. The discounter might want my clients, but they are not set up to serve the needs of those clients. I might occasionally do business with one of the discounters preferred clients, but I have no interest in seeking them out, and I cannot stay in business spending as much time and effort on them as someone where I make the full commission. Truth be told, the existence of such clients dilutes the value of my reputation, when somebody who has persuaded me to offer them a discounted package for lesser services tells someone who might otherwise be a good prospect that I did a good job, but nothing special. My target client is someone who's not only looking for excellent value, but recognizes it when they see it.



Caveat Emptor.

I got this email the other day, responding to one of my Hot Bargain Properties posts on my other site:

I am currently working with a coworker with no agreement. However, she has offered to rebate 50% of her commission. Are you negotiable with your commission?

I am very ready to buy a place at a bargain or discounted price. I have been pre approved by DELETED for $550 but I do not want to spend more than $525, preferably around the $450 range.

I have sufficient liquid funds for 10% down and have an excellent credit score...score 3 months ago was 752.

Let me know.

Now, I do have lower cost and commission rebate packages for when buyers bring me transactions that have the property at least settled upon. The reason is that not only is there much less work to be done done, but I'm providing a lot less value in those circumstances. I'm not going out and going over dozens of properties, eliminating eighty percent of them before taking them around to see the good stuff. I'm not doing background checks on all those properties, looking for issues. At the point that the property is settled on, at least half of the value a good buyer's agent brings in is already moot. We've already dealt with the issue of which property (or properties) are worthy of making an offer on. Now we're down to negotiations, where I still provide a lot of value, facilitation of the transaction, which any real estate agent worthy of their license can do, and looking out for problems, which starts earlier when I'm locating the property, but when you have title companies and building inspectors and appraisers getting into the act and getting paid, it becomes easy. It's no longer a matter of spotting the issue before an offer is made, it's a matter of dealing with the issue if and when it pops up. Much easier, much less time consuming, and much less liability on my part. When you've decided to make an offer before I even come into the picture, there is no issue with did my representations cause you to make an offer on the property when you would not otherwise have done so. I haven't been sued yet, but that's the number one cause of real estate lawsuits. Sometimes it's an unscrupulous agent telling the folks that the airport is going to close, but sometimes it's also people who think the agent said something they did not in fact say, and sometimes it's people who make something up stuff due to buyer's remorse. If you've already decided to make an offer, that whole issue is gone. Liability? Much less. Amount of work done and time invested? Way less. Amount of value provided to buyers? Also much lower. So yes, I'll work for less in those situations.



When I find the property, I retain the entire commission.



Yes, getting half the buyer's agent commission seems like a good idea on the face of it. One to 1.5 percent of a purchase price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But how much value do those agents really provide? Consider: Did that agent find you something as interesting as the property they emailed me on? If the agent they were working with was finding them properties like that, there would be no need and no interest in working with me. If she spent enough time shopping the market that she even knows what is and is not a bargain, this person would never have contacted me. Does she look for problems and issues or does she just say "Here is the living room," and try to talk you into making an offer on every property? What value is that other agent providing you? If the answer is, "not much," then no wonder she's willing to rebate half the commission! As far as she's concerned, the half she does keep is free money for going around and looking with you. My goal is that my clients end up with at least 10% they would not have had without me - either a better property for the same money, or the same value property for a lower price, or some combination of the two. Now, if getting half of a two point five percent commission via rebate sounds better than saving 10% of the value of the property, or getting a property 10% more valuable for the same price, by all means keep shopping agents who rebate commission. If getting a property that is worth more, or paying less for the same property, is what you are after, you need someone who is likely to deliver that, and those discounters business model does not allow them to invest the time and energy to do so. Quite frankly, if they don't make a habit of it, they aren't likely to have the necessary expertise, even if they wanted to.



You may ask about how this squares with my attitude about loans. Yes, I'm one of the deepest loan discounters there is. That's because a loan is a loan is a loan, as long as it's on the same terms, and most folks qualify for better loans than they get. A thirty year fixed from National Megabank is the same loan as a thirty year fixed from the Bank of Nowhere in Particular, provided the rate, costs, and terms are the same. Only difference is who you make the check out to.



No two properties are alike. Especially in the current market, the difference between shopping smart and not doing so is multiple tens of thousands of dollars, far more than a commission rebate. I don't rebate buyer's commissions because I provide more than that in value. In my estimation, and that of the people who are working with me, it's money well spent. You get what you pay for.



Good buyers agents make a habit of looking for real bargains, whether or not they have a client it's appropriate for. It's called market knowledge. With market knowledge, a good agent can not only identify the ones that are bargains, you are able to negotiate better terms on those bargains. Good buyer's agents usually have bargains they know about that they just haven't found the appropriate client for yet. If you'd like to work with them and get shown these bargains, or have them go looking for bargains specifically for you, there is a price to be paid, and that price is that they make a little more money than the do-nothing discounter. You don't pay it, at least not directly, the listing agent does, and through them, the seller. If you believe that the final price might be somewhat higher to reflect that, you would have some justice on your side, provided you don't consider the value in locating the bargain property, the value in negotiating for a better price, and the value in avoiding problems before they happen, or dealing with them in initial negotiations rather than at the end of escrow. If you don't see the value, then not only are you saying that you don't see the solution, but that you don't understand that there is an issue. This indicates someone on the first level of competence: The unconscious incompetent. Not only do you not know how to do it, you don't realize that there is acquired knowledge and acquired skill involved.



Now a good agent who knows they provide value should have no difficulties asking only for a non-exclusive buyer's agent contract. if you don't like what that agent does, if you do not agree that there is value in that agent's approach, this leaves you free to stop working with them at any time and go work with someone else. If the agent doesn't perform, as in find and deliver a property that you agree is more "bang for the buck" than you would otherwise have gotten, by all means go work with the bump on a log who splits the buyer's commission with you.



If you want a Yugo agent that breaks down in the middle of the transaction and leaves you stranded, that's no skin off my nose, but you are not the client I'm looking for and the bargains I find are for my clients. I am neither obligated nor inclined to share them with people who want to use some other agent. Go find them yourself if you don't think I'm providing value. Just the knowledge that something like that is available should be a large amount of help. But if you can't, perhaps you might consider that perhaps I might be providing a certain amount of real value for my pay?



Very few people reading this are likely to be receiving minimum wage for their employment. If you are not prepared to concede that it is possible for more skilled, more knowledgeable people to deliver a more valuable product, whether that product is service or commodity, what possible justification do you have in making more than minimum wage? For that matter, unless you are one of those people whose work has to be done on site, why isn't your job being done by some subsistence level worker in a Fifth World hellhole? Even if we limit ourselves in the application of this principle to qualified and licensed people here in the United States, my guess is that your boss could probably hire other people to do your job more cheaply, but his additional investment in you probably makes him more money than that cheap replacement worker would save, and that's the reason you are worthy of your pay. This very same reason is why I am also worthy of my pay.



By the characteristics they are claiming, the person with the email at the top of the article is a very qualified buyer. Don't you think that should be working with someone who knows how to use that as leverage to get them a better bargain? Suppose they weren't. Don't you think it might be in their best interest to have an agent who knows how to structure a transaction so that it can work, and can help avoid wasting time and money on properties and transactions where it can't and sellers who do not have the option of working with them in the requisite way?



Or you can pay full price for a mediocre property, and console yourself with a much smaller amount of cash, that when you consider the entire situation, is a fraction of the money that came out of your pocket but didn't have to. Pay too much, and get a check back for maybe a fifth of it in cash. Sound like a good deal to you? Maybe you didn't pay cash for the property, but then you've got a loan, and you paid additional fees based upon the size of that loan, and interest because you borrowed that money, and more in property taxes because you paid more than you should have. All of this eats away at money you would otherwise have in your pocket and equity that you would otherwise have in the property. Just because there's no explicit dollar figure on it doesn't make it any less real. How would you feel about writing a check drawn directly on your net worth for some unknown amount? Not so hot? That's what you are doing by using some bump on a log discounter who basically allows you to keep a percentage of what they provided no real value to earn. This is one of the largest transactions of your life. Scrimping on the compensation of the person who has the knowledge and skills to save you many times what they cost is almost as intelligent as OJ Simpson hiring a cheap lawyer. Even though I hope that you haven't been accused of murder, using a less skillful agent means you wasted money. Even though that's not a crime and you did it to yourself, it's still nothing beneficial to your overall financial picture.



Caveat Emptor

UPDATED here

Short answer: It almost certainly won't sell!



The first thing that happens is that when it goes onto the Multiple Listing Service, all the agents who see it know that it's overpriced. Even on the public part of MLS, the members of the public who see it wonder, "Are the walls gold-plated or something?"



The first thing you want when you put a property on the market is for everybody who is looking for a property of that nature to come and see it. Overpricing it is the best way I know of to cut down drastically on the level of interest. If they don't come see it, most people are not going to make offers. Most particularly, they will not make good offers if they don't come see it. If they do come see it, they are going to be expecting something better, and disappointed people don't make good offers, if they make one at all. That high asking price communicates that this property has something above and beyond the competition. If it doesn't, they're going to wonder what in the heck you and your agent were thinking. They're going to go away shaking their heads at the waste of their time. If they make an offer, it will be a desperation check.



The agents in the area are going to avoid the property, also. They know what similar properties are going for. Why should they try to sell yours for $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 above market comparables? Yes, they'll make a little more if they do sell it, but it's much easier to sell a property that is a real bargain. I'd rather sell sell a real bargain at $400,000 than an over-priced turkey for $450,000. The difference in compensation isn't that much, and I'll work much harder, and I'll lose most prospects by trying. I try to sell them an over-priced turkey looking for the sucker of the year, and a large proportion of clients won't want to work with me any more. I can make the commission off of a $400,000 sale, or I can lose the client by trying for $450,000. If they can afford $450,000, I can find them a better property at the same price. Happy clients bring me more clients for free, and as any real estate agent or loan officer can tell you, getting potential clients in the door is the hardest and most expensive part of the business. I assure you that every real estate agent who has been in the business more than about three hours knows this. If you were priced right, I might have shown that client your property, but you weren't, and so I didn't. Either you have placed yourself beyond their budget, or I can find something better for the same price.



Furthermore, overpriced real estate tells me that not only does the listing agent not know what they are doing and does not know what appropriate pricing is, but also that the seller likely does not have their head in the right place as to what the property is worth. Six months or a year down the line, it's time to make a low-ball offer and see if you're desperate yet. And if you needed to sell in ninety days, you will be. Right now, if I bring in a client who offers what the property is really worth, that's so much wasted time on my part and that of my buyer prospect, because I'm fighting two people with their heads stuck in the Land of Wishful Thinking, and I cannot force either one of you to listen to reason.



If people do come see your property, most of them won't make an offer. Most people don't look at just one property, even if they like yours. They may not look at enough properties, but they will look at more than one before they write an offer for anything. And since they have seen at least one other property, unless it's as overpriced as yours is, they're not going to make a good offer on yours. Many times, it may falsely communicate to them that the other property is a heck of a good bargain, and you just sold that other property, for which that other property's owner and listing agent surely thank you.



By over-pricing the property, not only do you set yourself up for all of this, but you miss the period of highest interest in your property, which is right after it hits the market, tapering off after about a month. One of the hardest, most pernicious ideas for a good agent to fight is the idea of putting it on the market over-priced "just to see" if they can get thousands of dollars more than comparable properties are selling for. The other is the concept of "bargaining room." Not only are you unlikely to get more than the market comps, but by over-pricing the property during the period of initial interest, the owners have almost certainly frightened away potential buyers who might well have offered market value if the property was priced correctly. Nor do these people come back later. They're looking at the stuff that hit the market this week, not four, six, or ten months ago. The agents in the area remember that it sat on the market for six months even if you somehow manage to get the days on market counter reset. Foot. Bullet. No assembly required, because you did it to yourself. If you had a need to sell by a certain time, or for the best price, it's not going to happen.



Indeed, several months out, you'll start getting those low-ballers I talked about earlier. They really do want to buy your property, but they won't offer anything like what you might have gotten earlier, because your property isn't worth that much to them. It's no secret that just waiting a little while on over-priced property is one of the best ways to get a bargain that there is. Most people put the property up for sale because they have a reason they want it sold. Most of those reasons are time-sensitive, and many are time critical. Wait until the deadline looms, or has passed, and the seller has no bargaining strength. I don't care how much "bargaining room" you gave yourself. Bargaining room is nothing. Bargaining strength is everything. When your best alternative is losing the property to foreclosure, you have no strength. If you won't deal, these folks will wait until the lender owns it. It's all the same to them, but it isn't to you.



Now right now, with prices falling, the appraisal isn't quite the problem it usually is for over-priced real estate. But usually, if you actually do win the lottery - and the odds you are facing really are in that league - and your listing agent sells it to the Sucker of the Year for more than the comparables, the appraisal isn't going to support the sales price. This means they can't finance the full sales price, and the Suckers of the Year are even less likely than other people to have the money for a down payment. I've said this more than once, but I don't remember the last time a first time buyer had a significant down payment. Even people who aren't first time buyers usually want to buy with as little down as possible, and you've just boosted the amount they have to come up with out of their pocket if they want your property - not to mention that most purchase contracts these days have appraisal contingencies built in. Even with prices falling, many appraisals are falling short. A couple of nitwits just put the house I grew up in on the market for 630,000! I took a look for grins and giggles. The owners have gussied up the back yard a little, but other than that it's the same as I remember. No way is that appraisal coming in even if they do find the Sucker of the Year to make an offer, so the Suckers of the Year have to front all those thousands of dollars to make the transaction work, and Suckers of the Year are just that - suckers. The chances of them having that kind of money sitting around where nobody else has conned them out of it are miniscule, to say the least. The only alternative I'm aware of is a seller carryback, and there are some real issues and problems with those. Meanwhile, of course, you are stuck in escrow with them and the clock is ticking and they may have grounds for a lawsuit if you are not careful. Even if they don't, they may sue you anyway, and tie up the title until the court gets around to ruling, or until the arbitration hearing and all of the appeals are over.



In short, over-pricing your property is the best way I know of to get yourself very frustrated, waste time, and end up forced to accept an offer that's less than you could have gotten if you had simply priced the property correctly in the first place.



Caveat Emptor

UPDATED here

One of the things that sticks out about buyer's markets is that there are two sorts of listings: Those who are willing to do whatever it takes, anything it takes, to get the property sold, and the other who apparently just likes having the property in MLS.



Many listing agents have made a habit of telling people that they can get more for the property than the next person over. Well, some can. But there really is no secret as to how they do it. They have the discussion to price the property correctly in the first place, and if the listing price isn't appropriate, they will not take the listing. I don't list many, but if someone is insistent upon a listing price that is too high for the market, I am better off not being part of that listing. Even if it does sell after two major price reductions for less than I likely would have gotten straight off, that client is going to be angry, not happy, and tell everyone it's my fault.



Indeed, if there ever is a market where listing agents can reliably get more than the value of the property, something I am pretty sure doesn't exist, the buyer's market is the furthest thing from it. What a good listing agent can get you is the full value of the property, but that's a very different value, and a very different mindset, in a buyer's market than it is in the seller's market San Diego had for most of the last decade.



Now, you need to ask yourself, "Why is this a buyer's market?" The answer is as simple as supply and demand. High supply and Low demand. Many people who want to sell, not very many at all who want to buy. Result: Those few buyers who are willing to be out there have all of the power. If this particular seller won't take the offer they make, the next one over, or the one after that, will.



Now most sellers would agree that this is a challenge. Buyers think it's great. This last week, sellers outnumbered buyers 44 to one. Inventory is off over 3000 units since the beginning of November, but the number of buyers has fallen by almost half. Normal for the time of year, but not so hot for sellers anyway.



What's a seller to do about this? Quite simply, ask yourself if you have to sell or if you have other options. If you have to sell, make up your mind that you are going to do whatever is required to make a transaction happen. This can be a lot: cleaning your house up, making it attractive, pricing it better than the competition, and not kidding yourself. The offer you are going to get still won't be anything like what you might have gotten two years ago, but two years ago the ratio of sellers to buyers was about three to one, often less. You will be much more likely to get an offer, and remember, you decided that you need to sell.



Lest you think you aren't competing with other sellers, go find a real expert in your area to help you right now. In the entire history of the United States real estate market, no buyer ever bought a property because it was that seller's "turn." You are always competing against other sellers, but this market makes it far more obvious. Buyers make offers on your property because something is attractive to them where other properties are not. This can be features, this can be location, this can be willingness to do what other sellers are not, or this can be price. Usually it's a mixture. In this current market - remember that 44 to 1 ratio of sellers to buyers - it's likely to be all four in great heaping gobs.



If you don't need to sell, get it off the market! If you are not going to accept a much lower price than it might have gotten, you are wasting your time. Those few buyers who are willing to get off the sidelines are bottom feeding and bargain hunting. If you have a better choice than feeding the bargain hunting and bottom feeding buyers, take it. If your property sits on the market, then when the market does turn back, the fact it sat on the market is going to count heavily against you. The agents in the area know that it sat, believe me. I was in a half day class today with several hundred other agents. Everybody I talked to agreed that the only transactions that are happening in the current market are all happening completely on the buyer's terms. If you are not willing to meet those terms, you are not merely wasting your time, but actually sabotaging your future prospects of selling for a price that you would like.



If you are not willing to do what it takes to sell, get it off the market. Not only are you sabotaging your own future plans, you are adding to all of the excess inventory that's out there as a glut on the market. Indeed, for every additional property for sale in the neighborhood, people who are willing to do what it takes to sell the property are going to have to do a little bit more. Most often, this means "settle for a lower price than they might have gotten otherwise." Just the fact that there are 238 three bedroom houses listed in the same zip code gives buyers substantially more leverage than if there were fifty, or twenty. This drops the market that you are hoping you can use to sell the property two or five years from now, and gives it further to come back, which means that the pricing level will be lower when you go to sell yours for real. Individually, they may not make much of a difference, but collectively, they certainly do.



If you do need to sell, get all traces of the seller's market we had for most of the last ten years out of your head. This isn't about pride, this isn't about profit, this isn't even about breaking even. We have established that if you do not need to sell, you shouldn't have your property on the market in this environment. But you do need to sell, which makes the alternative of taking less than you think the property might be worth better than the alternative of losing it completely. And make no mistake, for as long as this market lasts, that is the attitude I (or any good buyer's agent) am cultivating in my buyer clients. If you won't sell, I'll talk to your lender after the foreclosure - if someone else has not already sold to me by then. Right now in San Diego, the only power sellers really have is the power to say, "no," and if your alternative is losing the property to foreclosure, a rational, informed person will pay thousands of dollars out of their own pocket instead, accepting offers way below what they owe on the property. And if that or something similar is not your alternative, then why in the heck is your property on the market? Why are you contributing to the apparent glut of supply to no good purpose?



Caveat Emptor

UPDATED here