As I write this, 72 agents have set foot into this condo since I first listed it on August 13, 2009.

I fol­lowed up with all these agents. The replies by two most recent who sent me feed­back included these com­ments: The unit shows very nicely and it is priced right for sure. and I loved the condo…  Sould sell soon.

It should have sold twice.

Two buy­ers, two offers, two mutual agree­ments
With an agent vis­it­ing this Kirk­land condo every third day there should have been an offer, right?  There were two. There were two offers and two mutual agreements.

Two buy­ers unable to pay
What hap­pened? Buyer num­ber one, pre-approved by his lender at time of offer did no longer qual­ify for  financ­ing 10 days before clos­ing.  Buyer num­ber two, also pre-approved by lender at time of offer,  allegedly forged his income doc­u­men­ta­tion and the trans­ac­tion was can­celled three days before clos­ing. This time, my client got to keep the earnest money.

Have we learned noth­ing?
There is a say­ing in this busi­ness that “buy­ers are liars.”  That’s per­haps a bit strongly worded. The real­ity is that some buy­ers don’t reveal all they should to their agents and lenders because  some­times the desire to own may be greater than the desire to own up to finan­cial real­i­ties. That this is still hap­pen­ing in the cur­rent mar­ket is truly astonishing.

The two failed trans­ac­tions have hurt the seller. Poten­tial buy­ers search­ing the web and the aver­age agent are won­der­ing why this condo is stilll on the market.

Gov­ern­ment “help” can hurt
The sec­ond fac­tor which hurt this condo and many other likely first-time buyer prop­er­ties was the exten­sion of the first time  home buyer tax credit. Sched­uled to expire at the end of  Novem­ber 2009, the exten­sion until April 30th took away the sense of urgency. As a result, agent vis­its to the prop­erty dropped dra­mat­i­cally in November.

Time­line and events

Short sales change mar­ket
The third rea­son this condo  is still on the mar­ket are an increas­ing num­ber of  short sales of sim­i­lar prop­er­ties. There were no 2-bed short sales in this con­do­minium com­plex in 2009. Now there are two.

Look­ing at the bright side
Through­out these six months, my clients have been help­ful in every way a seller can be help­ful. I would call them my friends although we’ve never met in per­son. They searched for “Kirk­land Condo” on the web. They found me and liked what they saw. We were all so close twice to sell­ing this condo. The third time will be a charm.

Although some poten­tial buy­ers don’t like being on the ground floor or wish they could bring their dog (only cats allowed), there’s  noth­ing “wrong” with this condo.