Redfin: A gift from the venture community to traditional real estate
No: 72
Right now the market is bloated with listings. Many belong to sellers who think they have a better handle on what their home is worth than the expert agents they hire. Agents themselves feed these hallucinations by deferring to their sellers rather than applying some backbone and good business principles. They’d rather get the listing, own it and pour ad dollars into it for as long as it takes until they can convince the seller to reduce it.
And you wonder why so many agents are living off of credit cards right now.
Flip to the buyer side. They see all these over priced homes sitting on the market. They aren’t buying because their agents – the same people who have the listings – are telling them to sit tight, price reductions are coming.
Now comes the Fed. Rates drop. Once again the housing industry is being pimped out to save the economy from a recession.
Will Realtors view this as a rebirth for real estate?
Will sellers now become convinced that they will be able to get their price?
Will they sit on these prices for an extended period of time thinking the Fed might cut again?
Will buyers now sitting on the sidelines take action, betting the pendulum is about to swing back up?
Seems to me like real estate is just one big wild west show with no sheriff in town.
— Davison