Why the offers to buy our house?

By Carol W. Pelosi

In the last three or four months have you had several offers – or more than several – to buy your house, either by letter, postcard, telephone or email?

Our house is on South Main Street, and until the recent past I had wondered why no one ever knocked on the door and asked about buying it. We are not planning on selling; it was just an idle thought.

Now I wonder what stirred so many real estate companies to try to buy our house and others like it all over the area. I asked two realtors I trust, Alice Ray and Brian Pate.

“They are people trying to catch some one off guard and buy their home for a steal,” Alice Ray said in an email.  “Jimmy (Ray, also a realtor) told the last one that called him that they must be crazy. The price they offered was way off, and even after he told them he was a real estate agent they kept on saying, call us if you change your mind.

“Be careful and tell your friends to be careful,” Alice Ray warned.

Pate said it is a question of supply and demand. “Inventory is very low right now.” There are only about 7,000 houses in this area for sale when in normal times there would be 12,000 to 14,000, he said.

That means realtors are casting about hunting for people who might be willing to sell. Those people include anyone who has been in a starter or what would be considered a first home for ten years or more who in normal times might be interested in a larger or more expensive home. Or another fertile field might be people 60 and older living in a house that could need a lot of maintenance.

You really might want to sell your house, but I suggest you choose your realtor based on recommendations and careful consideration of his or her local reputation, experience and record, not from a postcard in your mail box.