Our snarky friend Smithers is probably right. You agent’s opinion of value, even if he is an appraiser, is just that — an opinion. Unless, of course, he is holding a check book and prepared to use it. I don’t know where your home is located, but two very low offers in over two months in our neighborhood suggests that the pricing is off. It sounds like you are doing everything you can to accommodate showings. All of the access, glossy brochures and skywriting-style marketing efforts won’t help if the price is wrong.

You may want to at least consider switching agents and using someone who actually sells (closes) non-distressed properties in your neighborhood. They are likely successful at doing this in 2009 because they tell their sellers the ugly truth about pricing and don’t accept listings that are not realistically priced for today’s buyers in your neighborhood.

Perhaps the Bergs will wildly have different (and no doubt better) advice for you, seeing that they actually do this for a living, and I just soem dufus who drops in and makes snarky comments on their blog from time to time.

Good luck.

Why indeed. In a short-sale situation, I can see it as self-serving. It’s really in your best interests to delay the sale as long as possible. I’m hearing many stories of people living rent-free for over a year in a delinquent property. You’re already going to get the forgiveness on your credit report, and the 30, 60 day late marks are already there. Very often you can negotiate a surrender before a trustee sale so you don’t have a foreclosure on your credit report. Truth is, banks do the math, and they live by it. A short sale is the way to go right now, and they’ll take a long time to kick you out if when your property is listed.

Now when it’s not a short-sale… I dunno. Maybe selling their property just isn’t that big a priority to them.

Tara – I hear you. And, because too many agents don’t at least attempt to be considerate of the seller, extending common courtesies like reasonable notice, it does tend to wear on the sellers. This is why we always encourage our selling clients to set some reasonable boundaries at appropriate times, knowing they will invariably encounter unreasonable agents and showing requests. We warn them that agents will call and not come, or they will come and not call, and at these times, it is OK to just say no, particularly when you get a call from your driveway in the middle of Grandma’s surprise 90th birthday bash. These are not the situations I am talking about.

I’ve been hearing a lot recently that owners who are negative on equity are choosing to go into default and then negotiate with the bank to list the property below what they owe as a short sale. During this period, they just don’t pay any of their mortgage, property tax, or HOA fees. Because the bank’s point of view is that it couldn’t do any better as a REO and the price of foreclosing would even cut into the value more, they end up delaying the foreclosure process for this.

So, what I’m wondering is this: Are these sellers just being retards and not realizing the change in the marketplace, or is making it hard to show just a ploy to increase time on market and how long they get to live “rent free”?