Tuesday, 20th of May 2008 at 12:13:07 PMOver this busy weekend, I found some time to socialize with some of the area agents. In one of the side discussions that we had was around short sales. This is pretty fresh in my mind because on Saturday I showed a couple from out of town 18 properties, several of which were short sales.
I’ve spoken in the past about short sales, and I (like other agents), just don’t like them. They are misleading and challenging at best. For example, this couple was looking for a condo to have as a second home for when they visit Phoenix for recreation. So it was a basic search for units below $220,000. Well a short sale may pop up at $180,000. Looks like a great deal on paper, especially since other units in the development are running $200,000+, so we have a 10% discount.
Okay, imagine that you are in a Apple store (one of my favorites), you see a iMac advertised for $1,000 and you decide that is what you want, you go to pay for it and the cashier says the price is really $1,215. That’s after you spent 30 minutes staring at each other before the cashier gets around to scanning your purchase. You wouldn’t be happy, you said it was priced at $1,000 on the display and that this is false advertisement. The cashier points out the small print that price is subject to cashier approval. As the cashier, they feel it really should be $1,215. Well you are emotionally attached and exhausted after fighting with the cashier/bank, so you either purchase and won’t be happy or walk away and won’t be happy.
The new twist to this story is the one that I found funny. While sitting around talking about the short sales, it was discussed about how long it takes to get an offer approved by the bank (weeks) and in some cases the value of the home has actually come down since then. So back to the iMac story, while haggling with the cashier, a new better iMac comes out. Are you happier or more upset?
My position on short sales are that they need to be listed without a price (or a price that is fair market value, not a steep discounted price) and with a disclaimer that there will be headaches involved all around.
On a seperate note, I really like Apple and Macintosh, I would never expect this to really happen in an Apple store.
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