Guess what? My buyers submitted an offer last week. That in itself is quite ordinary. The extraordinary thing was that this home had multiple offers on it. There are lessons to be taken from this experience that I wanted to share.
Lesson #1-A correctly priced home WILL get offers. When sellers are realistic about the market value of their home, and price things well, the home will attract buyers. Correct pricing brings more buyers which increases the chances of offers...even multiple offers. If you are selling your home, and have the ability to price your home at market value...please do. You are not doing anyone a favor by overpricing your home. You will still have your home 6 months from now, you will have potentially lost more equity, and you will probably hate your agent because you will want to blame them for your overpriced home not selling.
Lesson #2-It is an incredible time to buy a home in the Jacksonville area. We are not plagued with the crazy runaway housing inflation issue that much of Florida had for years. Our area saw appreciation, and now we've seen deflation, but not like many areas of Florida. We didn't have as far to fall, and we have already seen dramatic price adjustments. It may not fall much further.
We track statistics for what we consider to be the Jacksonville Metro area weekly. The number of homes that have sold in the past 12 months as of the end of November was right over 13,000 for the area. For November of 2006 this number was 17,000. There is some optimistic news on inventory for sellers. Our inventory level was back under 12,000 available homes for sale. While this is dramatically higher than the just over 10,000 in November of 2006...it is dropping from the highs we hit this August. The pendings and solds are still very weak which is outstanding news for you if you are a buyer. Less competition means getting a better deal.
Between the low interest rates, high inventory, and motivated sellers...the market belongs to you if you are a buyer.
