When my sister was learning how to read many years ago she would pick up a picture book and rather than reading the words on the page would give us her interpretation of the pictures. Sometimes she was right, more often than not she was wrong. But she was four years old and she was trying so we let it go at that.
This memory came to mind last week when I was viewing properties with one of my buyers. One home clearly had been vacant for a few months but had been upgraded with granite counters and stainless steel appliances; whether the owner did this for themselves or before moving to help resale, there’s no way of telling.
“I think that he must have died,” my buyer told me yesterday. “Someone’s going to be desperate to sell.”
Now … having not seen a tombstone in the backyard, or evidence of a freshly-dug grave, I to this moment can’t figure out how my buyer came to this conclusion. I’m sure there are vacant houses on the market because the owners have passed on but I don’t think that’s the case on every vacant house.
In the eyes of this buyer every seller is absolutely desperate to sell and will accept almost any price to do so. That, of course, isn’t really the case. Sellers will review reasonable offers but most will scoff if the offer comes in at three quarters for a dollar territory. A buyers’ market means buyers have more leverage but doesn’t necessarily mean sellers will roll over for any offer.
Unless there’s the aforementioned fresh tombstone waiting by the shed.
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