Last evening, over cocktails with a friend in Chelsea, I was commenting (actually, "lamenting" would be more accurate) about how difficult I'm finding it to put deals together. When I do find a house for my clients that delights them (a sometimes near-impossible task, given often sky high expectations), getting the seller to agree to sell it as a fair price that my clients want to pay can be even more difficult. The last few months have been consumed with a lot of wheel spinning and fraught with frustration. I'd say "hair pulling", but I don't have any hair to pull. And then there's the gauntlet of the inspection and appraisal.
This morning my friend emailed me an article in today's NY Times: Housing Market Slows as Buyers Get Picky. It was like "Wow, it's not just here in Sullivan County, but in Seattle and Des Moines and well, everywhere across the country." The happy-happy of real estate has turned into a knock down, drag out fight in some cases. Luckily, I haven't had many of those, but putting together deals — and keeping them together — is much, much harder today.The article offered a bit of consoldation that it's not just me.
In 25 years of Hudson Valley and Catskills sales, I have never seen a more depressed and desparate market. Some clients could slash their asking prices in half, and still they would have difficulty generating the slightest interest.
Posted by: Carol Peter | June 21, 2010 at 12:46 PM