Market Cool Down??

Slowing Seen in Housing Prices

A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York.
More sellers are putting their homes on the market, houses are selling less quickly and prices are no longer increasing as rapidly as they were in the spring.

Some houses seemed to be on the market longer because sellers priced them too high, assuming that their value was still rising sharply. In other cases, people who otherwise would have waited a year or two to sell their homes - like empty nesters ready to move into smaller quarters - had listed them now out of fear that prices would soon fall.

The question remains whether all of this represents a momentary cooling off of some overheated housing markets, or it presages a more pronounced downturn that would end a decade-long boom.

The market is not as hot as the last two years. The cooling off has forced both sellers and real estate agents to begin changing their attitudes about residential property. Houses that are priced too high are sometimes on the market for weeks or months now, rather than gettining even more money than their owners had imagined they could get.

In our area of Connecticut, we have more over-priced inventory in this market than we have had in years. The most amazing thing is that regardless of all the documentation you bring to a homeowner trying to impress on them that they cannot list their house too high, they just do not listen. I am so tired of trying to sell houses 30,000 to 50,000 over fair market value and spending money on marketing them - it is truly frustating

Email me with your opinion at dawng@kw.com - to view properties in Northern Fairfield County Connecticut, home of beautiful Candlewood Lake, visit my website at www.calldawng.com