What’s love got to do with it? Shopping for a commodity instead of a home.

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

In the days of yore (one yore = 5 years on the metric conversion chart), open houses were much different. I almost enjoyed my Sunday afternoons. They were spent with people sincerely looking for a home, a home that fit their personal needs on both a functional and emotional level. The event went something like this: Agent makes home available for showing as a courtesy to the seller who wants to sell and the buyer who wants to buy, potential buyer tours home and makes assessment as to whether the home fits his needs, interested buyer asks questions to learn about features of said home and neighborhood, interested buyer compares recent sales to establish fair price and, having made his decision to purchase, enters meaningful negotiations.

These days, our open house experiences are very different. As an agent, I am a soldier being called to active duty. I am the enemy, and donning pith helmet, medieval shield and evil death ray deflector, I enter battle.

Steve and I both got the open house nod this weekend, and it was so painful as to be funny in hindsight. We enjoyed the usual Happy Hour debriefing, and our experiences were woefully the same.

“How long has it been on the market?” “Why are they moving?” That’s it. That is all anyone wanted to know, and these questions were generally flying as one run-on sentence before they had passed the threshold. Steve suggested that it was time for a little open house strategic planning, a preemptive strike if you will. Post it on the front door, or better yet, adopt Greg’s policy of using those nifty custom yard signs and display the vital statistics there. Even better, include the information in the open house ads we tirelessly run each weekend. No need to have anyone to driving across town when I can save them the trouble.

Keep in mind that we aren’t talking about the hobbyists, or the neighbors, or even the world-weary, sincerely-seeking-a-home contingents. We still get a smattering of these at our open houses. Steve related to me the story of a couple in the latter classification who stopped just short of drawing pistols in the living room while arguing about whether or not this home had more windows than the previous home they had viewed this day. “I like the other house; it has more windows”, said the husband. “Does not”, said the wife. “Does too”, “does not”… The reality (Steve pointed this out to me, but not to them) was that this was the same home, same model, same builder – SAME NUMBER OF WINDOWS! Forget the wood floors, the location, the lot size, the floor plan, or the school district – We want that 35th window back, now! They had been at it for eight months and emotions were running high.

What we are talking about here are those falling into the other categories: Career house-hunters, smoking deal seekers, frustrated do-it-yourselfers (“I don’t need no stinkin’ agent), and good people posturing as do-it-yourselfers who will never (in my career lifetime) do anything at all because they suffer from the paralysis of empowerment and (dis)information overload.

“42”

In the days of yesteryear (two yesteryears = 1.8 meters), “How long has it been on the market?” was not generally a loaded question. They were seeing the home for the first time and were genuinely curious, or they feared that it might be too late. Now, translated, this means, “Is the seller ready to accept $7.50, all cash, and my ’87 Buick?” If a home hasn’t properly “seasoned”, comps be damned, it is over-priced in the minds of these buyers, even if it is not. The Open House event, in fact seems to be taking on a garage sale atmosphere. “You want $300,000? I’ll give you fifty bucks, or I’m prepared to walk away”.

“We don’t know!”

“Why are they moving?” In a bygone era (bygone era = today minus 892 open houses), this question was usually a symbol of interested buyer due diligence. Does the neighbor host standing Saturday satanic rituals in their driveway? Has the poltergeist residing in the crawl space become an intolerable irritant? Admittedly, these would be important factors in the decision-making process. Now (now = now), the savvy buyer is looking for an opening to steal this home. The right answer to this question, if I am looking to generate an offer today ($7.50 and an ’87 Buick, with an $5,000 credit to buyer for closing costs) would be something along the lines of “The seller’s replacement kidney has just been delivered on dry ice to the Mayo Clinic and, if they haven’t closed escrow by Friday at noon, it will be returned to the donor”. And, by the way, any agent that answers the “Why are they moving?” question without the permission of their client (except in the case of the satanic rituals next door, which could in fact affect the decision to buy or not buy), is violating their fiduciary obligation. Read the Agency Disclosure.

We all want a “deal”, and there are certainly plenty of opportunities in today’s market to purchase a home at a lower price than a year or two ago. What I see, though, is judgement being clouded and decisions being driven by factors which are not entirely relevant. A home is an investment, for sure, but if you are looking to purchase a primary residence, days on market and the seller’s personal circumstances should take a back seat in the decision-making process to things like, say, the suitability of the home for your long-term needs. Price negotiation can follow. Commodities do not qualitatively differ from one another, with one barrel of crude oil being as good as the next. Homes, however, are each unique; no two are the same. Their value is established by the value to a particular buyer, and no two buyers are the same. If only someone out there seemed to appreciate the difference.