After talking with a client (a former real estate agent) whose family has voted (5 – 0 to sell one of their homes and 4 – 1 to sell the other) I popped out this graph for Victor Maas, who is famous for: ‘Statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is interesting, what they hide is critical.’ (Click on graph for larger version)

I particularly appreciate Victor’s pithy analysis of this set of numbers representing the February sale of Marin homes over $1M: ‘If only 2% of the homes are selling, it’s the price, stupid.’ Of course Victor always continues to ramble on, ‘wanna be sellers aren’t sellers …. the 12 actual sellers in February were the only ones with a home on the market who became sellers ….’ Sorry, Victor, I know of more sales in the higher ranges than you do.

Finally I said, ‘Enough Victor, enough!’ I was thinking that if 98% of the homes over $1M aren’t selling the recovery will be a long time in coming. And the 4% of sales in Mill Valley that were REOs and short sales in 2008 will have company.

How about …. Good News, always my favorite:

Peter Pickrel, with whom I have an escrow closing shortly, had another sale right away, and so did I. Peter sold a home in my town of Ross and I sold the Stinson cottage, leaving both of us list-less! (List-less is a retired Realtor). Oh well, I thought, there is that client I mentioned who wants to sell … after thinking about it a bit. And two others, also deer in the headlights. Mistake, me thinks, why wait – unless you believe that there’ll only be sunshine from now on!

Posted By: Tom Verkozen