Its hard to be surprised about some of the asking prices for Buchman properties. Often Jacob Lichter and myself can spend hours explaining to the home owner what the market price should be, often to deaf ears, and the property is later put up for sale at a ridiculous price often stagnating on the Buchman property sales market listings. Prices can change dramatically due to the fact that the market is so very dynamic. The reasons are very varied, political unrest, security reasons including wars and terrorist actions, the development of the city including shopping centers, shuls, transport, parks etc and obviously the value of the world currencies and the world property markets. All these factors and many more can contribute to sudden fluctuations in the real estate prices in Israel. It is only people involved in selling properties, I mean those that are involved in actual sales that really know what properties have been sold and for what price they were actually sold for. Bloomhousing and Buchman Real Estate have sold many properties in Buchman so far this year. We know the prices that people are prepared to pay for Buchman properties. We are very aware of the sudden changes that affect the market. Unfortunately there are a number of real estate agents who claim to be "experts" in Buchman real estate, who are bulldozing themselves from door to door promising home owners that their properties are worth far more than the market price. Are they doing this in order to capture the dreams and naivety of hopeful vendors, or are they just not selling enough properties and are valuing them on overpriced adverts? I certainly would not like to be the fool that pays large agency fees and being advised that the overpriced properties are being sold at market price. Yesterday Jacob Lichter and myself spoke to a vendor in Buchman who was told by a very well known agency specializing in Buchman real estate that their properties asking price was at least 300,000 NIS over the asking price that we believe it should be. I have seen the house advertised on their web site for such a ridiculous overpriced figure. We too sometimes have properties overpriced but that is because the owner refuses to go down and we immediately tell our buyer clients that they should know that the asking price is well over the market price.  We do not tell vendors to sell at over high prices and often walk away without signing vendors if their prices are not realistic. We are not selling idle dreams, we are selling real estate and we believe that we must offer our clients a professional service which we do with 100% honesty and integrity. 

Has the bubble burst?

As long as buyers refuse to pay ridiculous prices, the market will stabilize. The vendors will understand that buyers will not buy at any cost. If not once the world currencies and real estate markets recover, who knows what Buchman properties will sell for.

Michael Bloom