This is a really odd article. She starts off talking about her friends buying a house in 2002. You know, the good ol’ days when property values had nowhere to go but up…and up…and up. She ends it telling us that her friend from Delaware is a native Californian at heart, and how much she loves her house and the $200K in equity they’ve made in four years.

In the middle of the article, she drops this little tidbit about taking sellers’ feelings into account, so you shouldn’t offend their sensitive feelings by lowballing them. And, oh by the way, short sales are on the rise. As near as I can tell, this has nothing to do with her friends, because they bought the house, they love the house, they love the equity, and they are apparently not planning to sell it. Why then this waring to the reader of this article not to lowball?

At any rate, if this realtor really liked her friends, she’d advise them to sell their house right now and put the $200K equity in CD’s. A year from now, they may well be upside down and kicking themselves for blowing money they’ll never get back on hardwood floors.