There are many huge misconceptions and false assumptions made by both buyers and sellers when transacting real estate and over the next few weeks, I’ll share with you the most common ones that are made by buyers and sellers.

So, let’s start with buyers…Here’s the first of a three-part series on the ‘Top 10 Myths of Buyers’ when they are looking to purchase a property.

1. “Every seller is desperate to sell” – I’ve started at the top of the list and most obvious! Let’s face it – we all love a bargain and it’s every buyer’s dream to purchase that perfect home for a fraction of what it’s really worth, but the cold reality is that this very rarely happens! Only a couple of weeks ago in my article, I discussed the three different types of sellers and shared my belief there are very few sellers that are truly motivated to sell for almost any price within a set time frame. The vast majority of sellers will listen to the market feedback to a certain degree but will simply stay put if the best offer is too low for them to consider. Despite this, many buyers start their offers ridiculously low and wonder why an agent (well…a good agent who is working hard for the seller to get the highest possible price) doesn’t turn themselves inside out in persuading the owners to accept a silly offer given the falsely assumed dire financial position of the sellers.

2.“There’s hidden motivation in an owner’s reason for selling” – This certainly follows on from “Every seller                is desperate to sell”. The best way of colourfully illustrating this point is an experience I had at an open                      home only a few weeks ago. The buyers (at their fourth inspection) asked me a complete barrage of                           questions about the sellers including…

1. • “Where are the sellers moving to?”
   • “How many children do they have?”
   • “What do they do for a living?”
   • “What University courses are the older children studying?”
   • “What cars do they drive?”
   • “What hobbies do they have?”
   • “What do I know about their financial position?”

All of these questions were really quite rude, and I certainly didn’t answer any of them (even if I knew the answers which I didn’t for a number of them) but the buyers were clearly trying to grab any small piece of information and twist it into a distorted assumption that the sellers will accept almost any offer that the buyers make. The truth is that many owners simply relocate, upsize or downsize and there’s rarely extreme motivation when these reasons for selling are prevalent.

Some will even come straight out and ask “How desperate are they to sell?” or “What’s the lowest amount that they’ll accept for the property?” …a question I find rather strange. If they ask me this, my first response is “My question to you is ‘What’s the most you’d be prepared to pay for the property?’”

3.“I’m the only buyer in the market!” – OK, they may not say this, but I can assure you that some buyers                       think it. They’ve listened to their radios, they’ve read the newspapers and they’ve watched their T.V’s. The                 sensationalistic journalism bandwagon is once more starting to predict a huge drop in median prices of                    real estate in Australia based on all sorts of different factors and in my experience, the market is never as                  good as what the media say it is in good times and the market is certainly never as bad as what the media                  portray it is in slower times…but try to tell that to the buyers! It hasn’t been so relevant within the past two              years but prior to this, buyers are quick to use phrases like “Given the current economic climate…my offer                should be taken seriously” but the reality is that the market is often performing better than they think it is                and there are simply more buyers around than they think there are.

Recently, I had a buyer call me up to inform me that she was flying in to Brisbane from interstate and wanted me to pick her up on a Saturday from where she was staying in North Lakes, drive her and her family to a property in Cashmere at a specific time and drive them back to North Lakes. Now we’re as accommodating as we can possibly be towards buyers and will normally bend over backwards to assist in any way but when she started informing me in the next sentence that the home was (in her opinion), way over-priced and she wouldn’t be offering anywhere near the asking price, I politely informed her that she would most probably be wasting her time viewing this home if that was her true intention. She became quite irate when I suggested that even if the sellers were thinking of entertaining an offer that was this low (which they wouldn’t), I would strongly advise them not to accept it. She then threatened to “take her business elsewhere”. The bottom line is that she was certainly thinking “I’m the only buyer in the market.”

So, there’s the first instalment of this topic. Next week, I’ll share more buyer myths and misconceptions including a few real life recent examples that are (in hindsight) probably quite funny although I didn’t see the funny side of them at the time.

Until next week, Happy Listing, Happy Selling & Happy Buying.