Out of Touch Vendors

I was watching an episode of “Selling Houses Australia” last night with the ever-realistic and pragmatic Andrew Winters.  He certainly doesn’t beat around the bush when appraising people’s homes! An overwhelming majority of his “troublesome vendors” appear to have their heads firmly in the clouds when it comes to price, however.  Mr Papadopoulos on last night’s show had been trying to sell his unrenovated Redfern terrace home for almost a year, with no success.  He’d been through a few agents, as well as giving it a go himself, all to no avail.

SHA worked their usual magic on a limited $30-40K budget and transformed the narrow little terrace into a much nicer version of it’s old self, complete with furniture styling and fancy landscaping. It really looked impressive and so it remained for the open houses that the selling agent then organised, following the makeover.  Alas, as is the case with many vendors who are myopic when it comes to selling their own homes, Mr Papadopoulos suddenly upped his expectations and only listened to the one agent who “bought the listing” at an inflated $50-100K over Andrew’s revised appraisal.  Though a very recent and similar comparable was bought to her attention by Andrew, she glossed over it and waxed lyrical about her “confidence in achieving $850-900K” for the property. Naturally, Mr P was thrilled- why listen to reason when a professional agent is telling him otherwise?

Predictably, the house failed to sell at auction shortly after, with the agent then blaming buyer feedback for only providing prices such as “high $700K’s” and “possibly $800K”. Hmmm.

We see it many times in our travels- stubborn, unrealistic and out-of-touch sellers who prefer to listen to those holding the highest price placard, rather than the market.  According to our property databases, Mr P’s house is still for sale some 6 months later… though we wish him every luck with his sale he’ll eventually need to have a reality check and accept that his house simply is only worth what the current market is willing to pay for it.  Fullstop.