Advice for home sellers - Pricing homes right in a housing slump

The Asbury Park Press carries an AP story of interest to home sellers.

“The good news for sellers: Your house will sell. The bad? Only if the price is just right.”

That translates into taking a hard look at your listing price if you are serious about selling.

“The recently expired tax credits for homebuyers gave sellers a boost. Home sales surged and values edged up. The worst appeared to be behind us. But since the deadline passed at the end of April, housing has faltered. Job insecurity, tight credit and consumer confidence are undermining a sustained recovery, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades.”

“Here's the disconnect facing sellers: The vast majority of sellers believe their homes are worth more than what their real estate agent recommends, according to HomeGain.com. At the same time, most buyers think for-sale homes are overpriced.”

And it doesn’t look as thought things will change for a while. What do you think?  How does this affect you?

Read the full article.

If you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC

StephensTitle@comcast.net

http://www.stephenstitle.com/

From the New York Times - Housing Woes Bring New Cry: Let Market Fall

Bad news in the forecast for homeowners on Labor Day? The New York Times prints, "Housing Woes Bring New Cry: Let Market Fall."

The unexpectedly deep plunge in home sales this summer is likely to force the Obama administration to choose between future homeowners and current ones, a predicament officials had been eager to avoid.

The Obama administration has been trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat when it comes to the falling value of American homes and poor market demand.

Over the last 18 months, the administration has rolled out just about every program it could think of to prop up the ailing housing market, using tax credits, mortgage modification programs, low interest rates, government-backed loans and other assistance intended to keep values up and delinquent borrowers out of foreclosure. The goal was to stabilize the market until a resurgent economy created new households that demanded places to live.

With the exception of the tax credits gimmick, these programs have not been successful. The mortgage modification program has been an outright disaster.  Maybe drastic action is in order.

Some economists and analysts are now urging a dose of shock therapy that would greatly shift the benefits to future homeowners: Let the housing market crash.

When prices are lower, these experts argue, buyers will pour in, creating the elusive stability the government has spent billions upon billions trying to achieve.

There is a lot at play here; financially and emotionally. We've complained before about "strategic defaults" where a homeowner walks away from his home because its market value has fallen below the value of the mortgage. And we've mentioned that every seller thinks her home is worth a million dollars when it's listed for sale.

Maybe the "shock therapy" is what is needed.

Read the full column, and let us know what you think.

For your next title order or

if you have questions about what you see here, contact

Stephen M. Flatow, Esq.

Stephen's Title Agency, LLC

165 Passaic Avenue, Suite 101

Fairfield, NJ 07004

Tel - Fax 973-556-1628

E-mail Stephenstitle AT comcast.net - www.stephenstitle.com