Frauds, Fakes, Or Fabulous

Jun 23, 2008 11:55 pm US/Eastern
The "For Sale" Sign Comes Off With The 10 Day Sale
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
You could call it an endangered species: A "Sold" sign. But in the last few weeks Coldwell Banker has managed to sell 67 homes in the past few weeks, part of a 10 day sale put on by them.
"I think the fact that they knew they could buy at tomorrow's prices, but buy today, I think a lot of them took advantage of that," said Gus Rubio, of Coldwell Banker.
The sale included 600 sellers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. They knocked 10 percent off their asking price for 10 days.
"We certainly don't sell 67 homes in 10 days," said Rubio. "I wish we did; it would be a record."
Coldwell Banker is ecstatic, but for the 530 homeowners who didn't sellroughly 90 percent of the sellers this sale was a wakeup call.
"We realized that the market is lower than what we thought, and lower than what most people are thinking," said seller Fadi Halwani.
When we met the Halwani family three weeks ago, they were optimistic the 10 day sale would sell their home. It's been on the market for a year.
"It's definitely out of the box," said Claudia Halwani.
Ten days after the 10 day sale, they got a new sign advertising their new price.
"Ten percent off, we decided to keep it at that price."
It turns out the 10 day sale price has now become the 365 day sale price for most of the people who didn't sell. Halwani has even considering lower his price even more.
"Lowering prices brings in people, definitely, definitely," he said. "There is a lot of competition out there so getting offers is a little bit tough. Pricing decides whether you sell or not."
One thing the sale did do for all the sellers who couldn't close on a deal was bring in a lot of foot traffic into their homes from buyers checking out their homes.
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