Tracy Tutor Is "Pretty Ticked Off" About an Issue at Her $8.8M Listing: "I'm Over It"
"It is going to be a long year," the MDLLA agent said while discussing the challenges of selling a "beautifully executed property."
On the Season 15 premiere of Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, Tracy Tutor broke down the recent challenges of the real estate market, noting that because of the Los Angeles "mansion tax," people "don't want to sell" their homes.
As MDLLA viewers saw on Episode 2, finding buyers for homes is also proving to be more difficult, and Tracy isn't holding back her frustration.
During the July 17 episode, Tracy had a request from one of her clients asking to discuss a "bullsh-t offer" they received on their house that Tracy was attempting to sell for $8,775,000.
"We got an offer on Crescent Bay. The offer price is very low. It's $7.1 million," Tracy explained in an episode interview. "It is all cash. Obviously, that is way too low, and I know James [the developer and seller], he's going to want to reject the offer immediately. But I'd like to present to him an alternative."
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As Tracy, James, and James' wife, Frances (who was co-listing the property with Tracy) got on a call to discuss the offer, it was clear James wasn't thrilled.
"Realistically, $7.1 [million], I mean, that's laughable, right?" He said. "It's really a disrespect to all three of us that they would even put in a $7.1 [million] offer on an $8.7 million house."
While Tracy — who suggested a lower price point in the initial listing meeting — agreed, she had a solution in mind.
"What if we counter them and concurrently reduce the price to the $7,995,000 that we've been throwing around for a while but we weren't ready to go there," she suggested. "Maybe that encourages people that have seen the property to come back to the table which could drive urgency, we could end up in a multiple, potentially, we could drive the price up on the current buyer."
Tracy Tutor opens up about changes in the real estate market
As Tracy told her client, the current real estate market made finding a buyer for the home uniquely challenging.
"You and I both know, James, that this property a year ago would have traded with a 9 in front of it," she admitted. "Trying to keep up with what's happening every day in this market is painful. Without this lowball [offer], we'd be having a discussion in a few weeks from now if we didn't have another offer on the table and reducing to the same price without the leverage of having an offer in hand."
"Whether me reducing to $7,995,000 creates an urgency for the $7.1 million buyer to come or it makes a new buyer come to the table and it creates a buzz that we're now at a great price, I don't really give a sh-t," she added in an episode interview. "I just want the buyer to be solid and get close to $7,995,00 so that I can close this house for James."
As the trio discussed the price reduction, Tracy reassured James and Frances, "It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the home that you built, it is just, unfortunately, the market that we're in, and things are not getting better."
After agreeing on the new price, Tracy said, "I'm glad we had this call, I was pretty ticked off about it as well. Let's turn the lemon into lemonade." She then mumbled after hanging up, "I'm over it."
In an episode interview, Tracy expressed more of her frustrations about the struggle to sell the home.
"At this price point a year and a half ago, if you were on the market for longer than 21 days, you were dead in the water," she said. "Today, we're looking at the average days on market of 140 to 165 days."
"We should've been under 8 [million] all along," she later added. "I hate to say, 'I told you so,' but I told you so."
Did Tracy Tutor sell her Crescent Bay listing?
Later in the episode, Tracy revealed that after reducing the price to $7,995,000, she once again reduced the price to $7,599,000. However, there were still no offers.
"To have to fight this hard to sell what I consider to be a beautifully executed property is a defining moment in where the market is," she said. "The market's f-cking sh-t."
She added: "It is going to be a long year for real estate agents and brokers around the country."
However, she wasn't giving up hope.
"I think we've got a little bit of time," she told her clients. "We made this reduction. I mean, there's stuff that's sitting on the market, you guys, for 1,000 days ... We do not reduce again. You're under-selling it at that point."
