Beware Angry Sellers

In addition to the expected increase in sob stories about people who are finding themselves underwater on their exotic loans (it's only going to get a lot worse folks), we are now starting to see angry pro-seller articles like this one -- sellers are angry because it is, or becoming, more of a buyer's market; sellers are having to jump through all sorts of hoops and make all sorts of concessions to sell a house.

Although this article doesn't focus on Marin, it still just so resonated with me given what I've seen of the Marin real estate market where it is now hard to walk into an open house that hasn't been staged, doesn't contain granite counter tops, industrial strength kitchen appliances (stainless steel of course), fake Tuscan wall paintings, cherry wood cabinets, designer faucets, tiles that come all the way from some exotic sounding Italian village, bags of French herbs, etc., etc.

Some choice quotes:

The housing market used to be so hot that buyers began writing offers before real estate agents even entered a new listing. And then agents advised buyers to improve their bids by writing personal letters to the seller, explaining where they planned to put the nursery and gushing over the owner's wonderful taste in decor.

Now with last month's real estate listings up by 23 percent since the same time last year, Twin Cities sellers might want to try writing a personalized letter of their own:

"Dear Buyer: Make us an offer. Puh-leese."

The long-predicted real estate bubble hasn't proved out, but you can tell by the number of "For Sale" signs on your block that the tide has definitely turned. Cable television channels, once overcrowded with programs showing how to sponge paint your walls to resemble a Tuscan villa, now are teeming with programs like "Designed to Sell," "Sell This House" and the ever more desperate "Buy Me."

In all of these programs, sellers are advised to paint over their sponged Tuscan walls with something inoffensive that buyers will like. Not that anyone really knows what buyers want, there being more than 26,000 homes for them to choose from in the Twin Cities — a record high.

Similarly frustrating to sellers is the current trend for "staging" a home, creating a kind of still life of single-family living with none of the books or personal knick-knacks but a constant supply of fresh flowers, scented candles and other gimcrack no real family could stand for five minutes. Buyers have become so accustomed to these faux tableaux — the angled couch, the arranged tea service with cozy, cashmere throw — they seem not to notice the actual architecture surrounding it.