The only people who dont acknowledge that price baiting and manipulation are taking place are agents or former agents or those people trying to curry favor with agents in the vain hope of getting a bargain from some unfortunate, uninformed granny.
I concur. Bayview you admitted on this thread that your former real estate boss pretended to sell one of his own houses for a knockdown price, so he could attract potential buyers for his other listings. You are to be congratulated for exposing this scam. This is a widespread practice. Coming from a legal background I feel qualified to say that the courts would label what you described as a form of price manipulation. And Blind Freddy could tell you it is bait advertising at its worst. Either way it is illegal.
Be assured the authorities are showing a keen interest on the activities of a few agents who are getting uninformed grannies to sell at firesale prices.
Local people are angry at being diddled by agents who have no formal university-level valuation or land economics expertise. It is incredible that real estate salespeople who haven't finished high school often give us "advice" on the worth of our most important asset - our homes?! We don't need to be insulted by the likes of Funkysouth, who has admitted to being a salesman, and others who want us to sell our homes for a pittance. Do any of you salesmen have post grad qualifications in economics or land valuation? What gives you the right to tell us what our homes are potentially worth when you people use bait advertisements and other scams to manipulate market expectations? Sorry, we don't trust you.
My wife & I worked hard to afford to retire here. We have a low opinion of the local real estate community in Frankston and surrounds. The salesmen we dealt with in Manly (Sydney) where we last lived were a lot more professional. They never used scaremongering tactics to persuade grannies to sell their homes at fire-sale prices.
Yachtie,
It is not a scam; it is perfectly legal "bait" advertising, and as I've already said; done by millions of businesses all over the world in many different industries. If you think it only happens in real estate you are very naiive.
You're getting all worked up over nothing.
I agree that agents aren't licensed valuers etc, but they don't need to be.
If they are working in the industry for a decent length of time - say, 6 months, they will know the values of the properties reasonably well by then.
Ask any serious investor how long it takes them to learn the vals of a particular area they are scrutinising for their next purchase - it'll be about one month of their time.
Then what happens is, someone calls up 4 agents, and says "can you come around and have a look at my house because I want to sell it, and can you tell me what it's worth?"
So then all the agents come around; they all know there are other agents booked in for a similar meeting with the Vendor.
Basically, they are all competing for the listing, and this may shock you to know, but all these agents will probably drum up the probable asking price the house is worth so they can secure the listing. So, they are inflatingn the asking price - not decreasing it. Of course; they know the real market values is somewhere below this.
Then, the Vendor selects one of the liars, and that agent then proceeds to try and get all his buyers to make offers up to the Vendor's asking price.
Of course, this doesn't often happen unless you are a FHB with a time limit, so they try and crunch the Vendor down, and the agent is there happily assisting the crunch process in order to make a sale and get some food money.
Occasionally you will get a granny caught up in the funny stuff, but serves her right; if she has wandered through life living in a cocoon and knows nothing of the world, then that's what you get.
It's a miniscule percent of the market in play, so can we now move on.
You're a cracked record and no-one is listening anymore I'd say (other than me - but I'll argue till the cows come home - nothing else to do).
