Sandy

I spoke to the realtor last night (and btw, thank you for all of your replies!)

She is a very nice person certainly, very polite and I can see why my parents picked her.

Initially she said that we have to be “patient”. I asked her whether we should drop the price, and she said “well, that’s your parents’ prerogative”. I said was there anything else we can do to at least get some showings, and she said that she would advise putting in a new kitchen. I asked her whether that would enable the property to move, and she said “it will help, but I can’t guarantee whether it will sell.” I asked her about sales volume in Bryn Mawr and the surrounding areas and she said “there isn’t much selling going on.” She then said that my parents could rent out their place until the market “recovers.”.

Trulia says that sales volume is down about 73% in Bryn Mawr by quarter (March-May ’08 vs. ’07), and from their numbers it looks like substantially more for the type of house my parents have, see http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Bryn_Mawr-Pennsylvania/ so it’s pretty obvious that without a pretty sizable drop in price the product isn’t going to sell. I don’t think it’s a good idea to put $100k into the kitchen, better to drop the price by another $100k. I’m going to advise my parents to drop the price to $799k and see where we are. It’s under what others are asking, but better to be early than late, and others can deal with the value resets as they see fit. Given our situation if we don’t have an offer by the end of the summer I’ll review this at that time. Obviously it makes no sense to rent it out and suffer greater losses, and my parents are relying on me to help.

Anyway, thank you all for your help and replies. It gave me a lot to think about and I’ll let you know how it goes (or if it goes). - Wed Jun 18 2008, 05:41