Lead The Duck!

If you’re a hunter shooting at a flying duck, you know you’ll have to aim in front of the duck if want dinner. How far ahead of the duck depends on what size of gun you have and how fast the duck is flying. Well, so goes the real estate market, particularly the one we are in. The duck represents the market and the gun represents the price of your home. We often hear sellers tell us that they want some “negotiating room” or they can always “come down.” While this line of reasoning may work to some degree when the market and the price of houses are on the increase but what if the market and prices are not increasing? Let’s go back to the duck analogy and say that the duck is flying backwards. Ducks can’t fly backwards you say? I suppose you’re technically correct but work with me here -- If you aim ahead of the duck when it’s flying backwards your chances of hitting it are not good, and it may be McDonalds tonight. Let’s leave this lame analogy and go to house prices.

In a rapidly inflating market you can afford to be a little ahead of market value because the market will catch up with your price. If you leave too much room for “negotiating” or if you take the “we can always come down” attitude, in a down market, you could find yourself chasing the market all the way to the bottom with price reductions. We see this often with FSBO folks when they don’t have a good read on market statistics. Often, a hard lesson to learn is working with the market you are in, not the market you wish you were in.

As you can see, leading the market is not always the wisest strategy.

Ask me sometime how they catch ducks in Australia.