Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
MSN Money released an article today on the 2010 real estate market that has me in a fairly prominent position. The article is entitled Homesellers Finally Get Real, and addresses the process by which homeowners have accepted and adjusted to falling prices. The quote is split up, but here is what I said:
Look at it like the stages of grief. In 2006 and 2007, it was denial; in 2008 and 2009, it was mourning; in 2010, it’s acceptance.*
Enormous numbers of foreclosed homes have sold with suppressed prices, and that has leveled the playing field for homebuyers,” says Faranda. “If a guy with a half-million-dollar house still thinks it’s worth $600,000, I can show him two or three foreclosures that are listed for $400,000 and $450,000 and ask him how he thinks I’m going to hypnotize people into buying his house for $600,000.
Of course, that is the distillation of a 15 minute conversation with the reporter, and there is far more to it than that, but the end result is the same. If you want 10 and the going rate is 8 because of foreclosures, you aren’t getting 10. That’s the reality of Westchester real estate.
Altos Research is referred to as the first source in the article, and that is great for Mike Simonson, whom I have met a number of times. He is a very nice guy who puts out a top notch product for real estate professionals. One colleague who agrees with me is *Sue Adler of Short Hills, NJ who is the top Keller Williams agent in the state. I first heard Sue use the stages of grief metaphor and while the article doesn’t name her as the place I heard it first, I’ll say so here. Both Altos and Sue are members of Active Rain as well as Rob Hahn’s Lucky Strike Social Media, where I first met them both.
Quotes in the national press are gratifying. The reporter promised to send me a link and probably will (still early on the west coast) but I have already been emailed by clients. My wife tells me I should be more vocal about things like this, because my credibility as an agent and broker are the currency of our company. At some point, I will make a more comprehensive sidebar link to all of the places I have been cited as a source, which does tend to separate the producers from the pretenders in the Westchester real estate market.
