Oops, Did She Say That?

Yep, some of you were wondering if it were a Freudian slip when I said in the Bolinas note that a property was ''over-priced'' at $1.395 million.

A big part of our jobs as realtors is to provide insight on value--sales price, appreciation potential, renvoation costs, and so on. So we don't do anyone any favors, least of all our clients, by leaving them to guess whether a price is appropriate, might be adjusted through strategic negotiation, or if the seller is just dreaming. (Of course some buyers have the willingness and capacity to pay more for their ''perfect'' house than it might be worth to the market; but even they should know whether the house is likely to appraise . . . )

A higher price may mean a tad more money in our pockets (for ease of calculation, assume that 1% of that ''excess'' price goes into my pocket) but it's hardly worth losing a client's trust over!