Canary In The Coal Mine

Michael Saunders & Company
As appeared October 19, 2008

Much has been written, broadcast and otherwise communicated about the crisis infecting the world’s credit and financial markets. Far from being a uniquely American predicament, the fiscal emergency has now stretched its tentacles to include most of the world’s industrialized
nations.

The clue that the crisis would spread well beyond our borders was writ
large long before it actually did. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight,
we now understand that trouble in the U.S. real estate market—and
the toxic sub-prime loans that helped cause it—was the canary in the
coal mine that long ago portended today’s globalized crisis.

For nearly a year now, the correction taking place in America’s real
estate markets has been spreading to other former red-hot real estate
markets such as Ireland, Great Britain and Spain. Stranded atop
a mountain of overpriced, unsold inventories, these countries are
now experiencing the same rejection by true end-use buyers that the
U.S. real estate market began to notice more than two years ago.
Consequently, top real estate and banking professionals abroad are
looking to American real estate experts to help them minimize in
every way possible the time it takes to work through their overabundance
of inventory. Among these experts is Michael Saunders, who
just returned from London following her well-received speech before
the International Forum of the National Association of Estate Agents
(N.A.E.A.).

The reason for wanting to short cut their own real estate correction
is nobler than simply wanting to protect their business interests and
shore-up their bottom lines. Previous financial crises suggest that
the bottom for struggling bank stocks won’t be reached until real
estate prices have fallen back to their fair market value. As long as
property prices remain elevated in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere,
our banking woes will linger.

Having someone in their midst who has famously helped Sarasota-
Bradenton lead Florida in its recovery from the nationwide real estate
correction, attendees at the NAEA forum appealed to Michael to
instruct them on how to get ahead of their own. What they heard is
what associates of Michael Saunders & Company have been consistently
instructing their sellers to do for the past two years. “Price is
king in today’s challenging market,” she said. “If you truly wish to sell
a home in a reasonable or expeditious time frame, begin by listing it
at a price that makes it the most undisputed value in its competitive
set. This means pricing it below a recent certified appraisal, below
a recent CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) or below all other
Clients of Michael Saunders & Company who list their homes in
accordance with this aggressive pricing strategy become eligible to
have their homes featured prominently on the newly launched Best
Opportunities section of michaelsaunders.com, the region’s most
extensive portfolio of residential and commercial properties. Unique
to Michael Saunders & Company, Best Opportunities provides a
dedicated online showcase for the most competitively priced homes
on michaelsaunders.com. Best Opportunities removes the guess work
for today’s value-obsessed buyers by featuring only those listings that
have been judged by a panel of real estate experts to be the best priced
buying opportunities in today’s marketplace.

Since launching this important new tool to help sellers succeed, Best
Opportunities has proven itself an unqualified success. Here’s why:
Visitors to Best Opportunities accounted for nearly than 100,000
online showings of property information, an average of approximately
16,700 per month since the program was first launched six months ago.
96% of visitors to the site experienced two or more online showings
per session.

As impressive as these statistics are, the true measure of Best
Opportunities success are best found in the actual sales that took
place between April 1 and September 30, 2008. During that six-month
period, 8.9% of all homes listed on the Sarasota MLS (Multiple Listing
Service) were sold. By comparison, 19.98% of all Michael Saunders &
Company listings were sold over the same period. Even more impressive,
25.1% of the homes listed on Best Opportunities were sold; a
percentage that climbs to 32.4% if you include homes with pending
contracts.

Just as world leaders have gathered to tackle the broader issues of the
global financial crisis, leaders of the world’s real estate community
have banded together to share strategies for solving their piece of
the problem. Confidence is ever-so-slowly creeping back into the
global financial system as banks are recapitalized with governmentguaranteed
backing and credit lending resumes. Buyers who froze-up
when the monetary crisis exploded into the world’s consciousness
have returned from the sidelines and resumed making home buying
decisions. More than ever they have price on their minds and are
determined to squeeze every ounce of value out of every transaction.
As fair market values redefine the housing market and property
inventories gradually diminish—both here and abroad—each new
day puts that much more distance between us and the worst days of
the global credit and banking crisis.