Open House Picks: Six Months Later
Comment: Still not much to celebrate. Open House Picks 3/13/09 [Brownstoner] Previous Six Months Later Posts [Brownstoner]
Comment: Still not much to celebrate.
Open House Picks 3/13/09 [Brownstoner]
Previous Six Months Later Posts [Brownstoner]
MoneyforNothing, I think you also meant that BUYERS control price since they have to be willing and able to buy, right?
I don’t think Hicks would have been 3.5 at peak. They priced that too high. Very clean on the inside but very Blah. The opposite of grand. Also narrow. Also on Hicks — nobody’s favorite block. Also dealing with Love Lane construction. Maybe it would have been 3.5 a block over on Willow. Or a nicer house on Hicks, but this was never a 3.5 house.
But if you’re an owner who is not planning to sell, why care what the prices are? It is a home after all, not a pile of stocks. I’m looking forward to the day that I don’t have to care about prices anymore and can instead focus on the joys (and yes, annoyances) of home ownership. Until that day, however, you bet I’m out to get the best deal I can on my next home, given the vast repercussions on every other aspect of my life! (and the fact that the current market direction favors prospective buyers…)
sorry, sell-side.
“Still not much to celebrate”
Unless what Mr B’s trying to say here is that prices haven’t come down far enough to close the cavernous ask/bid spread between buyers and sellers, this buy-side bias is starting to make me puke.
Sellers control price. They have to be willing and able to pay for your property for it to sell. Clearly that’s not happening.
Wages ain’t going up anytime soon, and interest rates ain’t going down any further.
Guess what has to give?
Actually, I guess it’s 23% off ask per Boerumresident. As folks here know, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. If we were at 23% off peak at height of spring sales season (when this must have gone into contract, I don’t think discounts of 35-40% are totally implausible as we head into fall/winter and even next year given continuing uncertainty. I am not holding out for “brownstones half off” but I also don’t think that is impossible. I would certainly be happy getting a 30-40% discount off peak.
I would wager because Mr. B is an owner. Once you guys buy, you’ll call for the bottom and hope for a strong market. It’s all about personal perspective.
DIBS, the Hicks St. house had a previous price chop of 550K before the new reduced price went on market. So to be fair, the selling price was a difference of 3,500,000 to 2,700,000 which is 20% discount off initial ask.
The takeaway stat here is that the pre-Lehman ask for a “nice but not super and somewhat narrow” house in the Heights had to come down 23%.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too bad for most sellers.