Let's Make A Deal!!!

The condo market in Westport is, like most real estate in the country, SLOW. But that doesn't mean that there aren't buyers out there. Today's buyers have a bargain mentality. Everyone wants to make a deal. If something is $800,000 they want to pay $725,000 for it. If something is $700,000 they want to give you $600,000. And don't get me wrong there are deals out there, there are deals to be made in every market. But this mentality has become a plague. Home buyers need to examine a property thoroughly, sit down with an agent, and look through the numbers, like what other similar homes have sold for or are currently listed at and then decide if the home is a good value, not if it's the best deal, because the "best deal" might have been terribly over priced to begin with. For example, let's say you're going to buy a new car and one dealership has a car on sale for $20,000 and another dealership has the exact same car on sale for $30,000. Now you go to the more expensive dealership first and finagle with the salesmen and make a deal to buy the car for $22,000. Meanwhile, another person goes to the first dealership and buys the car at full price for $20,000. The first person got the car for $8,000 off of the asking price and the second person paid full price for the exact same car. Who got the better deal? The second person did. Yes they paid full price, but the price was $10,000 less than the other dealership for the exact same car. And this is exactly the issue we are dealing with in the real estate world...everyone wants to make a deal AND a lot of properties are overpriced to begin with.

Let's apply this same logic to the Westport Condo Market. Now, let's take two very comparable condos listed for sale in Westport. A unit in Bradley Commons listed at $699,900 and a unit at Riverside listed at $750,000. The units are very comparable. They both have 2 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. Bradley Commons is 1649 square feet, Riverside is 1,291 square feet. Riverside has no garage whereas Bradley Commons has an over-sized one car. And Bradley Commons is new construction and Riverside is about 5 years old. The interior quality is fairly comparable. They both have granite counter tops, nice appliances, and are well built. But overall Bradley Commons has nicer crown moldings, better appliances and more space.

Now you, the prospective buyer, go out and view both these units and decide you really like them both. But you also want to make a deal. So your real estate agent calls the listing agent for both properties and finds out that they are only accepting full price offers on the new construction at Bradley Commons, but at Riverside they are considering all offers (or they want to make a deal). So you decide to put in a low offer on Riverside and completely blow off Bradley Commons. Eventually after several counteroffers, the seller at Riverside has reached their bottom line of $725,000, a whole $25,000 off the asking price. Meanwhile at Bradley Commons you could get a brand new unit, that is bigger, and has a higher quality finish for the full asking price of $699,900, which would save you another $25,100. So do you go for the better value or do you play let's make a deal and ultimately LOSE?!?