Everyone knows this market is nuts. Low inventory, low interest rates, and a surplus of buyers is creating the classic effect of supply and demand. You may have a large property to sell, but don’t want to put it on the market without knowing where you are going first. You may have several animals and/or livestock and need to balance more time to move after escrow closes. Or, you may have questions about a realistic timeline, how long will all of the steps take to get moved?
After helping folks around the Willamette Valley buy and sell homes, horse property and small farms for over 24 years, I will admit there has never been anything like this market. The bubble in 2006-2007 was close, but for very different reasons. This market is much tighter, with very, very little inventory. I recently took a phone call from a buyer’s agent waiting outside my seller’s vacant house to show it. She couldn’t get in, because the previous agent showing the house was still inside, locked the door for an hour, and wouldn’t let anyone else in to show it!
The hardest, most discouraging aspect of this market is the 15-20 buyers that make an offer on 1 house, and only one is the winning bid. You have approximately 19 disappointed buyers that have to continue the hunt or give up altogether. It is not unusual for buyers to have to write 5-10 offers on houses before getting one accepted. Can you imagine? You find the house you want, you are very excited, and then poof! You lose. Somebody else bought it. It’s rough out there.
Some buyers and their agents have gotten very creative with writing offers, including offering to pay the seller’s moving expenses, a year’s worth of Netflix, or allowing free rent back after closing for a determined amount of time.
Rest assured, we have multiple ways to help you as a seller navigate this market, and achieve your desired results. We have contingency clauses for your listing and sales contracts to make sure you don’t become homeless, and multiple items to negotiate to get the best deal possible for you unique needs. But perhaps most importantly, we have patience and understanding to find out what is important to you, and help you get there.
In 1997, I started my real estate career. It was years later, about 2005 when I noticed I was selling a fair amount of acreage and horse property. Being a horse person, I knew a lot of other horse people. It was fun to sell country property, and thought it would be great to create a purposeful website for acreage and horse property in Oregon. In 2008 I came across a program that was designed to help real estate agents build a niche website, which took about a year of research, planning, and design. Then, in 2010 we launched the site, promoting it at the NW Equine Expo. Since then, the business has steadily grown. You can read what some of our clients have to say.