Real Estate… It’s a Jungle Out There.

By Joel Persinger
YourRealEstateDude.com

When I was a kid, my uncle’s favorite saying was “It’s a jungle our there.” It always sounded like a slogan I might read in a newspaper advertisement or see on TV and I never quite understood what he was talking about. Then I got into real estate and his meaning suddenly became crystal clear.

Ask any real estate professional and you’ll find that the current real estate market is indeed a jungle. Just about every transaction reminds me of a journey through a misty rainforest full of pitfalls, booby traps and dangerous critters with big teeth. Just when you think you’ve figured out where the dangers lie, something pops out of the bushes and starts tearing everything apart. That kind of challenging business environment is understandable, once you come to terms with the fact that the market is dominated by foreclosure and pre-foreclosure properties.

In such a market, buying a home is a daunting task, largely due to what I call the “who cares bug.” When properties are facing foreclosure, many sellers move out and leave the properties to fall into disrepair like old, dead animals left out in the sun to rot. If the sellers haven’t stripped the homes of anything and everything, the looters and thieves who break in repeatedly, do it for them.

In the past two months, we’ve had one home broken into four times, another house in which someone tossed a concrete block through the front window and took all the copper wiring out of the house and still another home that the police had to chase people out of who had broken into the place to throw a party! This doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, selling the house can be difficult. By the time a buyer comes along, the house is in such a state that the buyer’s lender may not want to lend against it.

If it isn’t the sellers with the “who cares bug”, it’s the agents hired to sell the homes. When a bank forecloses on properties, the homes are typically assigned to brokerages that “specialize” in selling such properties. Given the number of foreclosure properties on the market, such agencies quickly become overwhelmed. As a consequence, buyers and their agents can never get a response out of them. It is quite common for buyer’s agents to leave messages, send emails and even send in offers without ever getting a response from the brokerage selling the house. Even if a response does come, it is generally from a clerk or assistant whose previous job, judging by the attitude they project, must have been at the DMV.

As an agent, you begin to realize how common the “who cares bug” has become when you return a call from another agent and he or she can’t stop thanking you for doing so. Just yesterday I called a fellow back who had left me a message about one of our listings. He was absolutely thunderstruck and delighted that I had actually returned his call. He thanked me over and over again for the entire ten minutes we spent on the phone. I almost couldn’t get a word in to tell him about the house. He was too excited about having gotten a call back. It was almost as if he had been locked in a dungeon for thirty years and I was the first person he had talked to in all that time.

Facing these kinds of challenges, buyers can become frustrated almost to the point of giving up entirely. The key to staying in the game and eventually winning is to set your expectations properly in the first place. Since you’ve read this article, you are now well prepared, because now you know what to expect. So, dust off your pith helmet and safari gear, steel yourself for a challenging adventure, use lots of bug repellent to ward off the attacks of the “who cares bug” and remember, house hunting in this market can be a great experience, but you’ve got to be prepared. It’s a jungle out there.