From Greed to Entitlement?

I posted earlier about this property on 7305 Arcadia Dr. in the Bel-Air tract of HB. This is a group of 102 houses all built and sold around 2005-06 and all upside down now. After unsuccessfully trying to contact this listing agent I called a realtor friend of mine. This husband/wife team in LB I’ve known for over 20 years and their good ethics is why they are probably able to work in this market. I also asked her to check on another property in this same section.
Anyway, she wrote me back the following:
After we spoke yesterday, I pulled up both of those listings. I called both agents and only the one Asian Lady Lillian got back with me regarding Arcadia Drive. It is a newly listed short sale, and she priced it at "Value Range Marketing" from $639,999.-$779,999. She said she did this for marketing reasons and now has two offers around $700k. She said you would have to come in at or above that price for the bank to look at you. There is no lockbox, and the owners only want people to drive by only- they don't want to be disturbed. The other Roxbury Lane in the Bel Air complex is a short sale also. The agent has a voice mailbox that is full and not accepting any messages, and the office number I've left 2 messages at with no response. As you can see from the PRIVATE COMMENTS FOR BROKERS ONLY at the bottom of the MLS I sent you, it seems that they have reduced to a bank-approved price of $799000. No lockbox, and no answer for showing either... I'd say that both of these are a waste of time for you..... Keep searching though.

I thought the “listing price” price was 639k since Redfin had it as that and not the “value range marketing”. All I have to say after that is “Are you kidding me”? Who sets a “value range marketing” spread of $140K?
Secondly, no lockbox?? And the owners don’t want to be disturbed? WTF?? Are these people putting in an offer without even seeing the place? In addition I checked it out on the OC assessor’s site and found they still owe over $12,400 on taxes. Who’s going to cough that one up? Throw in the homeowner’s dues that they probably are behind on and you see this baby starts to add up.
Still assuming they got a couple of offers and these people didn’t see the place it just perplexes me. The place could be totally trashed inside. Would you buy a car without test driving it? Of course not! Then why are there people that would do this with a house? Seems like plenty of stupidity out there to go around still.


The other property is just as bad as it’s been listed over 150 days and they don’t want to show it? And their “bank-approval” price is way over priced.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Huntington-Beach/18756-Roxbury-Ln-92648/home/5955330
Love the last line of the description “must see to appreciate” Oh yeah..well how about a freaking lockbox and show the place!!

I’m not sure if we are seeing the start of a disturbing trend or these are just isolated incidents. What we have it seems is owners, (if you can really call them that), that bought their house with greed and now feeling that they are “entitled” to stay in this house as long as possible. Almost sounds like a scam to me if you can get the bank to accept a price for a short sale and then the bank will wait it out for offers. After all they are swamped in many cases. Then you don’t allow anyone to see the place!

Here is an example from a Redfin forum:
http://forums.redfin.com/rf/board/message?board.id=LA_OC&thread.id=1681
I've seen some similar strange dealings. One 2-story home that has been listed as active on ALL the sites for about 4 months, yet there is now people in it who at least give the appearance of believing this house is theirs. They are doing work on the place, live there, have their vehicles there. If you call the listing agent (it has never had a For Sale sign in front) she comes up with all sorts of creative excuses for why the house can't be toured, even though it's supposedly still available. She went so far as to tell our agent that we wouldn't be interested because the former owner died in it.I had to laugh at that one.On a similar tack, two weeks ago we went to see a short sale near us. Our agent set up the time, we met them there...and were greeted at the door by the owner(s) who acted like they had *no* idea the house was being showed. Turned out that was a lie (our agent immediately called the listing agent who called the owners who begrudgingly let us in abut 3 minutes later). They were contentious and surly the whole time, but I suppose we ought think they actually liked us, as another agent/buyer team showed up right as we were finishing up (with an appointment), and they actually REFUSED them entrance. Turned 'em away. Sent 'em packing.We made an offer that was at the high end of the neighborhood comps, yet fell about 75k under asking. I expect a refusal from the bank, but who knows. Nice place, nasty owners. No wonder ours was the only offer on the place that has been made in over a month.

Are we seeing greed changing now to “entitlement”? Feel free to comment and tell me if you’ve had similar experiences.