Sellers 'demanding too much' for homes

A prominent real estate agent says senior consultants are walking away from up to a third of clients because stubborn homeowners are chasing unrealistic boom-time prices.

Geoff Baldwin, managing director of RE/MAX, said some vendors had not adjusted to current market values, which had dropped to a median of $470,000 from a high of $505,000 early last year.

Mr Baldwin had instructed his agents to walk away from sellers with unrealistic expectations, because it would do more harm than good to list properties at inflated prices.

He said sellers lost some negotiating power after long listing periods.

Delays in the sale of a property would also force homeowners under financial pressure to carry their unaffordable mortgage repayments for longer than necessary, he said.

"Some people say to us that they want to get a certain price otherwise they are going to lose money," Mr Baldwin said.

"Sometimes, we have to tell them, sorry, you are going to lose money on this property."

Mr Baldwin said sellers who refused to accept the valuation sometimes found an agent who was willing to list the price demanded

"We follow these 'lost' listings up and in the majority of cases when they list elsewhere they either don't sell, or they sell at or below what we quoted them," Mr Baldwin said.

New figures from the Real Estate Institute of WA show an 11 per cent drop in the number of listings for sale since the end of June, to 15,500.

REIWA's head of research Stewart Darby said the drop in listings showed a large number of sellers were taking their properties off the market.