Competing with Puffery

While watching an interview with Harry Markopoulos on CNBC yesterday (the whistle blower in the Bernie Madoff case) his comments resonated with me. He was asked how did he first figure out Madoff was a scam, he replied and I'll paraphrase "my boss asked me to develop a product like his and it was impossible, it took me 4 hours to figure out his reported numbers were a lie and impossible to mathematically recreate so I learned he was a fraud and a liar I cannot compete if he has people believeing his lies."

In the real estate business I believe we have agents that may overstate the value of a house, get a listing and hope for the best, which usually means No Sale or very long times on the market with no activity or keep lowering the price and hopefully the customer will stay with the agent. This is just wasted precious time for the homeowners and wishful thinking. So to potential home sellers be aware of puffery by some agents. I'm not calling them liars but your home is worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it and a proper valuation is important as we continue to be in a "buyer's market" for the forseeable future. I'm in the process of recreating all the activity for the most active listings agents for the last few years in my area and to see the original ask price and it's eventual sale price, I wonder if there's a correlation to high listing activity and 1st asking price to eventual sale price being lower on average than agents with only a few listings. So be careful, it's hard competing with puffery and I want to tell you like it is, good, bad and honestly.