Where I do most of my business, in the Tucson Catalina Foothills, I am amazed at the number of real estate agents that don’t get it. You can not sell homes at the same prices or more than the peak of the market that occurred 3 or 4 years ago! What planet do these agents come from? They are not doing justice by their Sellers who are listing their homes at prices that are not competitive and are on the market so long that they grow stale. Prices in homes 500K and above have been declining and yet many of the agents from the top offices that are top – producing agents continue to attach their reputation to way over-priced listings. Gone are the days when there are “California Buyers” heading into town who can not believe how much lower the prices are here so pay too much for Tucson Foothills homes. Buyers move slowly and cautiously in today’s market, and they make sure they are very educated before they take the plunge to buy. I for one am not going to join this group of agents that must be taking these listings,  figuring in time they will reduce to a sellable price. The Sellers lose out in the end because the listing becomes dated. The best buyers come at the beginning of the listing, not months after it has been on the market. Perplexing, and the only way I can make sense of it is that these agents have never seen a market like this so there is a long learning curve for them. Just because they are top agents from top real estate offices does not mean that the price they list many homes for sale makes sense. So if you are planning on buying a home in the Catalina Foothills, you better have a good agent who can weed through all these over-priced homes for sale, so you won’t waste time and you can zero in on the homes that are priced where they should be. And while we are on the subject of real estate agents, why list your home with an agent that just tells you what you want to hear, and is afraid to tell you the truth about the market and is not telling you about the pitfalls of trying to sell your home at a price that is not competitive? I laugh when I hear agents tell me that the list price is what the Sellers paid for it 3 years ago, plus commission. The list price should be detemined by studying the most recent competitive closed sales.