Is all fair in love, war and home buying? An excerpt from my most recent post for Boston Magazine:
As the Globe reported last week, and as I have been blogging about for the past year, many real estate markets around Boston have been pretty active, with bidding wars now again common in many locales. This is certainly true here in my town of Lexington, where multiple-bids on new listings is seemingly the rule and no longer the exception, particularly for houses priced under $1 million (which is roughly average list price in Lexington). However, there was one house priced at $1.3 million and another at $979,000 which both came on last week and had multiple bids.
Shhh, it’s starting to look like 2004 again.
When I am a listing agent, this is a good situation. Sellers are usually happy. But some can’t help but wonder if they could have gotten even more. Did they underprice the home? This is usually not the case. A house priced correctly in a healthy market will get offers below asking price, at the price itself, and some above. Now, if five offers come in, all starting 10 percent higher than your list price, OK, then maybe then it was priced too low.
However, the market here seems to have tipped dramatically to a seller’s market this spring. The demand seems particularly pent up. The competition among buyers is fierce. And on the emotional battleground residential real estate, such conditions can bring out the worst in people — buyers, sellers, and agents alike. All is fair in love, war, and, apparently, home buying…
Red the whole post here.
