From Indiana comes this tale which suggests that Greenwich does not hold a monopoly on dummies. That’s reassuring somehow, I suppose.
Read about your blog in the NYT. We have observed similar real estate phenomena in our house hunt in an isolated, relatively poor, and fairly uneducated (local high school only graduates 56% of students) city in Indiana (job brought us here). I can sort of understand denial in more desirable parts of the country, but here I find it especially hard to swallow. A few recent kickers:
Agent A confronted our buyers’ agent asking her why we were viewing homes “out of [our] price range” at open houses. The context: we viewed one of Agent A’s listings and told him it was a nice house but it had just hit the market and we were going to let it “simmer” a bit (you think he took offense at that?). Wonder why he thought it was out of our price range when a much nicer local home recently went for $50,000 LESS than the asking price for Agent A’s precious listing?
We made an admittedly low-ball offer on a house that has sat on the market since July 08, has been empty for months, and has owners who are “working with the bank” (to quote the listing agent). Their counter offer? The asking price. Hmmmmm.
My husband’s fine research revealed that “new price” on one home actually meant a HIGHER PRICE than the previous month!
We’ve also been dismayed, but not surprised to see that Unappealing Houses C, D and E have miraculously gone from hundreds of days on the market to 1.