Feeling like Joe

Every now and then I get feeling a little like Joe Btfsplk. You remember Joe Btfsplk don't you? Well if you're over 50 you might. Joe was the little cartoon character in the Li'l Abner cartoon who walked around with the dark raincloud always over his head. In the cartoon he was billed as the unluckiest man alive. I don't really feel unlucky. In fact I feel blessed. I have a great life with a wonderful wife in the best little town in America - Milford, Michigan. But, I do occasionally feel that people view me as having the dark little cloud over my head when we discuss the value of their homes. I have to be the bearer of the bad news that it's not worth as much in this market as they had hoped or that we need to lower the price again.

It's not easy or pleasant to tell someone who has lived in a home for decades that the only people who've believed that the home was appreciating lately are them and the local tax assessor. We haven't had any real appreciation since the 9/11 terrorist attack and in fact the values have dropped over the last 2 years. so now people are finding that a large portion of what they believe was their "nest egg" is not only not going to hatch as they thought it would, but it's starting to smell a bit and might have gone bad.

So, in walks Norm with the Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) that shows the home to be worth $40-50,000 less than anticipated (sometimes even more) and they start seeing me as Joe Btfsplk, with a dark cloud above me head. Needless to say, I get a lot of silence or mumbling under the breath when I present these CMA's. Often I'll get a polite thank you and be shown to the door.

Sometimes I'll see the house listed later by some other agent, for some ridiculous high price. That used to really bother me for two reasons - the home owners were still deluding themselves about what they could sell the property for, and, the agent who listed the house was going along with ruse just to get a listing, which they knew would have to be reduced big-time to sell. That's pretty much SOP for some agents. They know going in that the house is overpriced, bu they figure that they'll let the home seller stew on the market for awhile and then talk them into lowering the price to a competitive level. A more honest agent would stand firm in his/her convictions and walk away from the listing rather than add another overpriced home to the already bloated inventory. But, hey; that's just me, the guy walking round with the little dark cloud. Let me hear from you.