A Buyer's Market?

A buyer’s market should be just that - a buyer’s market. It’s not a fence-sitting, waiting, loitering, delaying, dawdling, postponing, vacillating, hesitating, wavering, faltering, pausing, foot-shuffling market. By its very name, buyers should be doing one thing and one thing only-buying. So where are the buyers and why aren’t they buying?

The great irony of a buyer’s market is that even though the opportunity to buy is high, buyer urgency tends to hit an all time low. The media becomes the excited purveyor of negative news and uninformed advice, and buyers buy it all. Actually, it feels like the only thing they’re buying. Their reluctance is ironic since not so long ago buyers were incredibly excited about buying—when it was a seller’s market. Prices were escalating and it was perhaps one of the most difficult times to buy value and yet people were buying like there was no tomorrow. Buyers were afraid of losing out by not buying even though the advantage was all to the seller. Now a shift has occurred—it’s a true buyers market and what happens? Fear is in the driver’s seat!!

When they should have been afraid of paying too much they weren’t and now that they shouldn’t be afraid of paying too much they are. Its one of the most paradoxical moments of any market and the herd instinct at is most pure. Reluctance in the face of great opportunity becomes an agonizingly defining characteristic of a shift.

Facts: The headlines are not going to tell you to “buy now”

You can’t time the market—you don’t know when the bottom really is!! History supports that if you’re always in the market, actively paying attention, although you may never sell at the highest peak or buy at the absolute bottom, you can buy right and always do well over time. Logic says that you can’t predictably time the market at the exact top and bottom.

SELLERS ARE IN THE SAME SITUATION YOU ARE IN! They know prices will come back up some day but they don’t know when. Genuine sellers want or need to sell now, but they have fears too. They don’t know if prices will go lower either so if they can sell today, they will. That means they are ready to deal because they’re afraid today might be the best price they get. This makes most very willing to consider reasonable offers.

quoted from SHIFT—written by Gary Keller and shared by Geri Reilly

- Stella Abraham, REALTOR

Coldwell Banker Hickok & Boardman Realty
346 Shelburne Road, Burlington, VT 05401