Realtors' President Can't Sell Home

From the Washington Post:

A Humbling Lesson for Realtors' President

He, of all people, should have known better.

The president of the National Association of Realtors, Thomas M. Stevens of Vienna, admits he didn't follow his agents' advice when the real estate market started to cool. That, he says, is why his old house in Great Falls has now been on the market for a year at the price of $1.45 million.

"What I should have done," confessed the senior vice president of NRT Inc., parent of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, "was listened to my agent and cut the price by $50,000 to $100,000 early on, and the property would have sold last October."

Or, even better, he said, "I should have listed it a month earlier," when the market was only just beginning to lose air.

Now Stevens, like so many other home sellers in the Washington area and around the nation, is waiting for a buyer in a market that has totally reversed course since a year ago. With two or three times the number of properties listed this year as last in some neighborhoods, agents are urging sellers to lower their expectations, put on their best face and offer incentives such as closing cost help.
...
"They sent the letter telling me the listing was approaching a year" and that the price needed another look, he said. "They're doing their job as agents. I'm not doing my job as a seller."

But, he noted, in his defense: "Who knew last September how long this down trend was going to continue," after so many years of climbing upward?
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When asked how long sellers should expect a sale to take these days, Stevens said 40 to 60 days would be typical. And if a house hasn't moved by then, he said, "You need to adjust the price. . . . But I didn't do that. And my house is still on the market."