Buyers return as home sales stabilize - Sideline buyers are remotivated to come back and try again.

 

HONOLULU ADVERTISER July 23, 2006

BY LISA SCONTRAS

Custom Publishing Group

 

As the housing market stabilizes on Oahu and around the country and inventories return to normal levels, some once-discouraged buyers are getting up the courage to jump back into the game again.

 

“Consumers who have been on the sidelines should feel more confident about the market normalization,” saidThomas M. Stevens, National Association of Realtors president, last week. “When it comes to bigticket purchases, buyers are more comfortable in a stabilizing environment.”

 

Tom Mukai, partner at Prudential Locations LLC, says that when the market was moving at such a fast pace, it was easy for buyers to get frustrated. But today’s more stable market together with the desire to buy real estate is slowly bringing buyers back. One of his clients, Lonnie Trimarche, was shopping just a few months ago and p u t i n a n return as offer on a fixer-upper at Kukui Plaza. The sellers countered the offer.

 

“The counter offer was so high it wasn’t even worth trying to work with the seller,” recalls Trimarche. “So Tom suggested that we wait about six months to see if the market would dip a bit.”

 

“We mutually agreed to wait a while and to assess the market in a few months,” says Mukai. “It’s not a good practice to submit too many offers which net poor results.”

Trimarche took Mukai’s advice and said he also signed her up to receive automatic updates on MLS activity in the areas she was interested in tracking.

 

After a few months went by, she noticed one of the updates she had received showed a new listing at Kukui Plaza in her original price range. “I called Tom,” she says. “As things turned out, the seller was motivated to be able to close in 30 days on a 1031 exchange and he accepted my offer.”

 

Trimarche says it was Tom’s automatic updates that motivated her to give it another try.

 

“It was the price that was not too terribly far from my price that caught my eye,” she says. “I was lucky — the owner needed a buyer who could close in 30 days so he wouldn’t lose his purchase and his 1031 exchange. Then interest rates went up a bit slowing sales, and I had a good Realtor who furnished me with timely information. It was a marriage of all these factors.”

 

Mukai’s advice to homebuyers who had tried unsuccessfully to buy a property in the past is to take a look at the market now.

 

“Interest rates appear to be heading up, therefore it’s a balancing act to wait for prices to come down slightly or to go forward with the purchase and lock in an interest rate."

 

Trimarche says buyers need to be patient and persistent in today’s market. There are deals to be made.

"There are always situations with motivated sellers and periodic dips in the market,” she says. “It helps to shop for fun and just always look with the possibility that you may get an offer accepted. If not, try again."

 

 

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