Key Highlights
- Uncertain times open up opportunities for steady-handed, canny investors and end-users
- What was considered next to impossible last month now possible today
The health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in this country and around the world have been devastating. In a matter of days, a total decimation of the stock market resulted in its worst first quarter in history. Housing markets in the US were hit with a sudden, universal jolt. And millions of working people were and continue to be now jobless.
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Can such a moment in time have an upside? Some opportunistic investors and end-users think so. They are looking to seize this time to secure discounts while knowing they won’t have to deal with many, if any, competing bids. And some sellers who need immediate liquidity are more willing to negotiate prices.
In the midst of sellers yanking their listings to “wait out” the crisis, the scant deals that closed in New York City had average discounts of 33%. In California’s Silicon Valley where homes were selling for 10% over listing prices, prior to COVID-19, homes are now selling at discounts of $50,00 and more. Some buyers in South Carolina are even asking for price concessions at the closing table, according to Mary Lou Wertz, co-founder of Maison Real Estate, in Charleston.
Alicia Cervera, managing partner of Cervera Real Estate in Miami told MansionGlobal that she is seeing “the same sense of urgency from New Yorkers, and other buyers from the tri-state area, that she saw in the aftermath of 9/11.”
The combination of deep price discounts and halting slowdowns in some of the most competitive markets in the country has most definitely given the edge to buyers and investors who know what they want and how to get it when the getting is good…for them.
Thanks to MansionGlobal’s Beckie Strum.
Also read: Nearly 1 in 4 Americans Unable to Pay April Housing Bill, Which Markets Will Be Hardest Hit by the Silver Tsunami & Tech Expansion, Will $2.2T CARE Act Sustain Economy or Are Relief Provisions Even Barely Enough?
