Don't Be Fooled By Headlines.

Recent headlines report “real estate sales (Eagle County) are on a record pace” but what does that really mean?

If you are like most people you have a very busy life.  So when reading a newspaper you tend to scan the headlines and take them as fact.  If the headline reads “real estate sales are on a record pace”, it must mean the market is very active and prices are continuing to rise.  Not so.

If you look behind the curtain at Eagle County’s sales this year you will learn that a lot of the sales pertain to contacts that were written two or more years ago on properties that had yet to be built.

The proof of how the market is doing is in the number of sales occurring in any given year, not the total numbers of dollars.  If you look into that aspect of the real estate market you will learn the number of sales in Eagle County is down by some 25 % from last year.  

This cleverly crafted headline only gives sellers false hope that their overpriced listing is going to sell any day now. 

Eagle County now has some 1,500 listings in the MLS up substantially from a year ago.  Why so many listings?  Is the market truly slowing down? 

In my opinion the market in Eagle County has slowed down only because the Seller’s are not getting the real information.  Seller’s think because their neighbor has his property listed at “x” that is what it is going to sell for, therefore his has to be worth “x” plus some.  Chances are pretty good the neighbor’s property is overpriced so when another neighbor lists at “x” plus some the result is another listing priced even further out of the market. And on it goes.

With so many new real estate brokers entering the game the competition is fierce for listings.  So, due to lack of knowledge about the market place and the need for a listing, brokers tell a seller what he/she wants to hear which only exacerbates the situation.  In time this problem will correct itself as the brokers who take overpriced listings will go broke marketing a listing that won’t sell.

The buyers are out there.  They know where the market is (it is not falling) and as soon as the sellers understand where the market is, the number of sales will increase, the number of listings will drop and real estate values will continue to rise. 

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