Wishing Prices vs. Actual Sale Prices

Kelley Eling is a local Marin real estate agent who is kind enough to send me each month an email containing some county statistics for the prior month. Her data basically shows what the average asking prices were vs. what the actual selling prices turned out to be. The trend for the last few months (actually, since she began sending me the data) has been that selling prices are less than asking prices for most Marin towns.

Below is a graph of her March, 2007 data. Notice that for nearly all towns the average selling price (yeah, I know, average, not median) was less than the "wishing" price.

To me this data is a light-hearted measure of denial vs. acceptance vs. depression. If properties are selling for less than the owner's wishing price, the sellers were originally in denial. If wishing and actual sale price are on par, the sellers were originally in a state of acceptance. If wishing prices are below actual sale prices, then the sellers were depressed.

It seems to me that most Marin sellers are still in the denial-anger stages of Kubler-Ross:

1. Denial ("I am not going to sell this house for less than I paid for it.")
2. Anger ("Damn if I’m going to believe that lousy report that says I am going to sell this house for less than I paid for it!")
3. Bargaining ("God, if you let me sell this house for a profit, I promise to be a better person.")
4. Depression ("I’m so sad that I’m going to sell this house for less than I paid for it.")
5. Acceptance ("I’m going to sell this house for a loss, but, you know what? I’m all right with it!").