Think about it – the average person gets their news on TV. They talk to their friends, relatives and neighbors; of these, 90% of our acquantances will lie to us about their less profitable decisions if given a chance to do so. A person who is reading the Union-Tribune qualifies as having more than the average exposure to the news. People who hang out on internet forums like this one are the tiny minority – we are the geeks everyone else ridicules.

Given these limited sources of information and considering how muted (until the last couple weeks) these sources have been about the potential for losses, why would the average buyer be spooked right now? I think the buyers who have pulled out are those who are more well informed – an example of that are the professional investors. The sheeple remain, and if there are big losses ahead it is those people who are going to get hurt the worst.

Unfortunately – and saying this makes me look heartless – I don’t think we really want those sheeple to come around too quickly. An more orderly retreat over a protracted period of time may have its merits. For one thing, having catastrophic failures among the lenders would affect credit availability. If that happened a sale at the reduced price still isn’t going through for lack of the 30% down payment or because of a 10% interest rate. Beware of unintended consequences.

Any rants aside, there is quite a bit of good information to found here. I think it is a valid and interesting question.

Four years ago, what did you tell buyers about the future of residential RE in SD? What do you tell them today? I am sure many of your buyers ask you for advice. What do you advise them?

Thank you for your responses.

Are any of your clients expressing concern over the market reversing?
If you believed that the market was going down, would you have a fiduciary duty to tell your clients?

SDR gets professional help:

MLS shows 21,500 active DET/ATT homes today. Amazingly, 5,900 of these are VACANT and 2,450 of the VACANTS have been on the market for 60+ days! That just about equals the meager closed sales counted for the month of May in this week’s negative article by the U-T.

Another .5 hike by the Fed may not raise the 30-year mortgage interest rates very much, but the fear mongering by the media (and a lot of folks on this Board) should soon complete the periodic transition into the new BUYERS MARKET.

Why use a checkbook to buy that good DEAL? Smart Buyers Agents will shore up decling price increases by asking SELLER’s of Vacant60 homes to do carry back notes against some of the owners ‘Fear Equity’. Proper matches of these buyers and sellers means great buys, mitigation of selling price loss, elimination of the pain of paying two mortgages, reduction of price “dumping” significantly below comps, and coming market stability that the media won’t discuss.

Opportunity knocks in a different way… Check out OwnerMayCarry.com for info and some potential SD Homes.

Well, I think the buyers are on the road to winning this standoff. I just saw that three new homes in Bressi popped up on the MLS. Apparently, buyers are not being enticed by these beautiful new homes, complete with thousands of $ of mello roos, and over $200 per month HOA fees.