A sad Sun City real estate saga told five times over: List high, sell slowly, close low.

Tell me if you’ve heard this story before…

As always, the price of delay is FHA. 194 DOM, 91.34 net-SP/OLP.

Started at a wise price, just much too high. The Sold Price looks like a counter to me: Buyer offered $220k, but the seller had had enough of this dagnabit discounting. 116 DOM, 88.42% SP/OLP.

FHA again, and another counter offer for the Sold Price: Buyer offered $300k, seller countered at list? Or are there undisclosed seller-paid concessions? 126 DOM, 95.38% SP/OLP.

The Original List Price hinted at $340k, as did the reduced List Price. But cash is a rapacious king: $330k again is likely a countered number, with the original offer coming in at $320k. The $35k concession is going to be in lieu of repairs, and taken all together this reads like an iBuyer-style flipper offer: Gouge ’em on price, then nick ’em again on repairs. Why did the seller go along with it? They ran themselves out of time playing stupid pricing games. 71 DOM, 80.82% net-SP/OLP.

From sleazy to sleazy to sleazy. I like the buyer’s offer at $380k, with the difference split by counter-offer. Regardless: 239(!) DOM, 86.46% SP/OLP.

In the mood to draw conclusions? These are all of yesterday’s Closings in Sun City – and every one of them pursued the same faulty strategy: List high at a stupid or sleazy number, languish pointlessly for weeks or months, periodically making price reductions to other stupid or sleazy numbers, ultimately approaching market value only to cave to an offer that discounts on price, concessions, repairs – or all three.

And that’s how we get here, with virtually every listing agent in Sun City making the same boneheaded mistakes in the same ways over and over again and learning nothing from the experience:

If you want better results – (ahem) better money sooner – you have to work from a different strategy, one focused on selling high and fast rather than low and slow – and to the least-prepared buyers.