“The consensus among colleagues is offers are coming in well off the listing price. It will be up to the sellers to come to grips with that reality.The buyers aren’t lowballing, they are saying that’s what they will pay.”
- Michael Ryan, realtor, Century 21 Queenswood, as quoted in ‘Victoria housing tilts toward buyers’, Times Colonist, 3 Aug 2011
Other excerpts:
—
…the average price for single-family homes sold in Greater Victoria last month was $581,117, down from $629,292 in June. The median price declined to $535,000, while the sixmonth average fell to $615,439. Prices were also down for condos and townhouses.
—
Real estate board president Dennis Fimrite maintains property owners won’t see the value of their homes eroding. “We will probably have a couple of years of steady prices,” he said, noting that will be a change for Victorians who have been used to watching selling prices escalate over the last several years.
“a couple of years of steady prices”
Professor Months of Inventory takes issue with this statement. It’a a looooong way until the next spring rush…
It’s the same bullshit in all markets. You could hear the exact same words a few years ago in Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc…
Well obviously the problem is that the sellers aren’t slamming the buyer’s offer in front of them and telling, no yelling, at them to be serious and come back with their absolute best offers. See once the seller starts get soft and all warm and cuddly and spend any time listen to buyer’s sob stories about can’t afford eat meat more than twice a week, or have to budget changing their 6 months old diapers at 3 times a day, they start spoiling the buyers and this what you get. Only a hard ass tough as nail attitude will do! So tell those buyers who low ball to go back to their lowly dank basements and re-work their budget and come with an above asking bid or else remaining in basements and devolve into subhumans.
Now Victoria may be soft but sales aren’t exactly zero: http://househuntvictoria.blogspot.com/2011/08/monday-market-update-invasion-of-ham.html
Sales are as strong as 2010 but that’s not strong, that’s a slowly falling market. A few more years of this and it might make sense to buy again. Maybe by “flat” they meant “2% annualized drop”. If so, on a $500,000 property that’s $10,000 a year, and at that rate it’s another 15 years of “flat”.