The Interactive Housing Bubble
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can now watch the housing market tank from the comfort of your own living room. Log on to Craigslist online classifieds, click on the real estate for sale section, and search using the keyword “reduced.” In some of the bigger markets, like Miami, you’ll find more than 850 matches for reduced houses and condos (by the way, the site only saves posts for one month).
Click on your favorite overpriced listing and copy the address. Now go back and paste it in the keyword search for the real estate section and there you have it: All of the previous posts and prices for that one address. A lot of the homes I’ve found when performing the “reduced Craiglist” test on the Baltimore market had their prices slashed by $15,000 to $20,000 in less than a month.
According to this article from an industry publication, we could see more for-sale-by-owner homes listed as markets cool and sellers attempt to maximize profits by cutting out commissions. But as we’ve already seen, the FSBO crowd is already getting frustrated. It seems that more price cuts are looming…
Gunner
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