Messages to sellers

awgee_IHB

awgee_IHB

New member
Ok all, here is your thread to communicate with sellers:<p>


I will start.<p>


Your asking price is too high for me to buy. It does not bother me that you are asking what your house is "worth". I don't care one way or the other what your house is "worth". Worth is immaterial to me. I can buy. I can buy right now. For cash. And, I will not buy until I can buy for less than I can rent. I do not care if every realtor in South Orange County says that homes will never sell for less than rental equivalent. I have been through two previous real estate cycles and have experienced otherwise and I have no reasonable reason to think that this cycle will not duplicate the last two cycles.<p>


If you really want to sell your house you need to set your price under what buyers are willing to pay and forget what your house is worth and what homes in your neighborhood were selling for last year.<p>


There are way more sellers than than are qualified buyers. Just about every qualified and unqualified buyer who didn't already own a home and wanted to, bought in the last couple of years during the frenzy. There are very few folks left who want to buy and only a small percentage of those can actually qualify for a mortgage. To hook one of the few knife catchers out there, you have to lower your price.<p>


If you do not really need, as opposed to want, to sell your house, and you are not willing to lower the price to what a buyer will pay, you may as well take your property off the market. There is no one who wants your house instead of any of the other thousands of homes for sale out there. Your home is not special. It is wood and stucco on a piece of dirt, and there are a million others like it. All the other houses out there can be changed, remodeled, or whatever to make the house special to my family. There is nothing about your house which makes it worth more than the other houses in the neighborhood and it is probably worth less.<p>


I can wait. The longer I rent, the more I am liking it, especially the part where I am saving all that money while watching the home I sold depreciate. I can rent a home which is just as nice as the home I can buy. My landlord likes me because I pay my rent on time and he knows I have enough from my home sale that I will not run out of rent money before I die.<p>


Hire a realtor who will tell you the truth about what your house will sell for, not what it is "worth". Hire a realtor who has been around for many years and will not take a listing on which the price is too high.<p>


I don't care if the kitchen has granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, blah, blah, blah, if the price is too high. I can buy granite counter tops and other stuff if I want. Granite counter tops do not add $50,000 to the price I will pay.<p>


Well, that is it for now. Maybe some more will come to me. What do you want to say to sellers?
 
I don't really have a message for them, I let the market do the talking. Of course they seem to be really slow to respond. I just went to an open house in Turtle Rock and was aghast at how asking prices are not just high, they're pretty much ridiculous.
 
<p>Dear wannabe buyer:</p>

<p>I love owning my home. I bought it in 2000, for 400K and now it is worth 800K. I took out 200K in equity and can live rent-free the next 3 years. If you don't buy my house now, I'll sell it then. I don't mind living off my equity during the meantime. If the house still doesn't sell by then, I would have saved 3 years worth of rent, then I can let the bank foreclose on the house. So please, whether I sell today or three years from now makes no difference to me. I'll just simply trade my good credit for 3 years of free living.</p>

<p>Signed,</p>

<p>Not a Distressed Seller</p>

<p>My point is, only the sellers with no equity have real distress. For those with 30-40% equity in their home, they can still live off of it for quite somet time.</p>
 
Dear hs_teacher:



You still have to make payments on that HELOC. And, they can still go after your other assets to satisfy the shortfall since it's not a purchase money mortgage. Hopefully you're not opposed to working past 65 years of age or living like a pauper until then.
 
Dear hs_teacher<p>

What course(s) do you teach?<p>

I wonder how many other folks have borrowed on their home in order to make payments on their homes?
 
Dear Seller,





I am not interested in what you think your house is worth. I am only interested in what I am willing to pay for it. If the amount does not satisfy you, do not accept my offer -- someone else will.





Sell now or be priced-in forever.





They aren't making any more buyers.





In a bear market, real estate only goes down.
 
Dear Seller,





Please write me a letter and explain why I should buy your home. If the letter is too long I will not read it. If the letter is too short, I will not read it. Make the letter just the right length.








By the way, I noticed that the oven was dirty, please clean it.
 
<p>"If the house still doesn't sell by then, I would have saved 3 years worth of rent, then I can let the bank foreclose on the house. So please, whether I sell today or three years from now makes no difference to me. I'll just simply trade my good credit for 3 years of free living."</p>

<p>I look forward to purchasing this property for less than what hs_teacher paid in 2000 (comparably speaking, of course) as an investment property and renting it back to her. The money she "saved" (stole from the bank, really), she will be giving to me! </p>
 
<p>I really think there are people out there who are living on equity. Whether they take out 100K or 200K, they have enough cash to pay for their mortgages for 2-3 years. So they're not distressed at all. Maybe 3 years from now. And if the house is their only asset, they're not too worried about losing it.</p>

<p>I think it's all about how much equity you have. If you have over 200k, then I doubt you'll have any distress at all.</p>
 
<p>Do you really think home values will fall below 2000 prices? I think a condo will eventually average for 300k and a single family residence will average for 450K.</p>

<p>Paying $2000/month for a condo is very reasonable. Paying $3000/month for a house is also very reasonable.</p>

<p>I personally don't believe prices will fall below those levels.</p>

<p>My assumptions:</p>

<p>60% of the population are steady homeowners with plenty of equity and manageable mortgages.</p>

<p>30% of the population are steady renters who are not looking to buy.</p>

<p>5% are distressed sellers who bought at the peak with zero down, interest only payments.</p>

<p>5% are wannabe owners waiting to buy from those distressed sellers.</p>

<p>So maybe only 10% of the population really have an imminent stake in home prices.</p>

<p>Thus 90% of the population will go on with their daily lives and could care less about what's going on.</p>

<p>And of course there are those in the industry who are always rooting for more sellers and more buyers.</p>
 
hs_teacher, how does your argument make any sense when you take into account the fact that real estate prices are set at the margins? So it doesn't matter if "most" people don't need to sell, if "some" need to sell (or get foreclosed on) then whatever prices the transactions occur at, will be the new comps.
 
<p>"Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told <em>The Times</em>. </p>

<p>Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged into a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years. </p>

<p>Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already lost around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase threefold over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.” "</p>

<p><a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3111659.ece">http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3111659.ece</a></p>

<p>Of course, just a prediction, but it does look like there is a distinct possibility that home values will fall below 2000 prices.</p>
 
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