It is hard for many people to conceptualize what the real estate market is. It is like trying to describe in words what the Internet is or what space is. The market for home sales can be quite difficult to understand. Hopefully, this article can help give more insight in understanding the real estate market.
Instead of thinking about “the market” as something intangible think of it as Ikea. Imagine that the market as an actual place you can enter into that is massive in size. Within this market is every house for sale in your state; from the far reaches of the corner to the most densely populated cities. Every home for sale resides within this building.
So how would you go about organizing the market? How can buyers and sellers easily find the homes that are for sale? Imagine that each aisle within the market was a city. The aisles up front when you walk in are the major cities where you’ll find the majority of homes for sale.
Down each aisle of the market, you’ll find the shelves. Here are the homes that are for sale organized by price point and style; either condo, single family, ranches, two-story, multilevel or customs. The front of the aisle is priced low, and the back of the aisle is priced high and just like a grocery store, the homes that are priced right in the market are at eye-level. Anything that’s overpriced is above eye-level, and anything underpriced is below eye-level. There won’t be much below eye-level these days.
Next up are the houses themselves on each aisle. Imagine an overabundance of holographic images showing you pictures of the homes. These images are 20 feet above your head and all the way down to your feet and extend down the entire aisle. You can select any property from anywhere in the aisle and then scroll through photos and property details. If the house is active, you can book an appointment and walk through the home. If it is under contract, you will not be able to see it, but you can look through the photos.
Some properties will not be able to find quickly in the aisles of the market. However, sold properties, for instance, will be in the sold department. Homes that are For Sale By Owner will not be found in the aisles either. There’s a particular aisle just for these called Third Party Syndication Listings. Here you’ll find information on everything on the market including the FSBO’s, however, this aisle is not at the front of the market it is in the back. Oddly enough, people will walk to the very back of the store, to this one aisle, just to begin looking at what’s for sale in the market.
If you wish to book an appointment and see an active home you simply book it through the heads up display. If you have an agent working with you, they’ll escort you outside of the building where the house appears, like magic, and you can walk right through. If you do not have representation then, the market has plenty of agents eager and willing to take you to look at the house(s) out back. Think of this area as a giant facility similar to the laundry mat. You press a button, and the house drops down right in front of you. Take a tour, press the button, and on to the next.
The hard part about the market is that it is not like an Ikea. When you walk down the aisle of the city, and you are browsing what’s for sale at a price point you want, you’ll notice it is always changing. It is not stagnant. Sure, it is not like watching the stock market or the ticker at the airport showing changes in flights. It does move. However, what was there yesterday is not there today. What you saw priced at one price has now moved up the aisle because the price has now gone down. Alternatively, maybe a home was overpriced and out of your sight but the price came down, and now it is at eye level.
Every market is going to be different with more or fewer aisles/houses to choose from, depending on your selection. You have a choice to go right into an aisle and browse any home directly, or you can select to use a Third Party Syndication and browse the market instead of just getting out there yourself. You can have your agent do the searches for you and select properties best suited to your needs, or you can do the work yourself.
The possibilities are endless. It is a real estate market. It is how you find homes to buy as a buyer and how we as agents find homes for our buyers. It is how we as agents find comparable properties for homes our sellers want to sell. However, the market is not one giant building the size of Ikea that you can go. It is the internet. It exists without existing. However, that is what’s great about the market.
