Realtor says brokers must add value to service by pricing homes accurately

I talked to Miller about the report, asking him to elaborate more on how agents can maintain that value with clients. The biggest challenge these days, he said, is pricing a home.

"For this area, I don't think we (the industry) are doing a good enough job with pricing. It's a little less challenging now, because new sellers understand that the market is different now and are not insisting on the price appreciation their neighbor may had seen a couple of years ago," Miller said. "Still, it's important to look at how comparable homes are sold a week ago; looking back six months or more won't cut it for most homes."

For real estate agents who are now competing against online companies such as Zillow, getting the selling price right is more crucial than ever. Miller said getting the price rights is more an art than a science, so agents need to have more than just old numbers, but a sense of what's happening in the market.

"Agents will have to go beyond the computer software programs, looking at what's happening in neighborhoods," Miller said.

Listing a price too high is much more a problem in the current climate, he said. The buyers have much more to choose from in every home price level, so if they think it's too high they can keep browsing. There is no competition among buyers for houses viewed as overpriced. Once the seller starts reducing the price, buyers are in a position to wait to see how far the price will fall, so activity will dwindle.

As for what's next, Miller believes the national and local market still has about a year to go before sales start rebounding, and it won't approach the heyday of 2004 or 2005. During the coming year, he expects to see changes in brokerages.

"I think we'll see some of the smaller offices either close or merge with other companies, especially if sales remain slow for an extended period of time," Miller said.

Here are a few tidbits from Miller's report:

Average days on the market for Whatcom County, second quarter: 113 days, which is up from 101 days in the second quarter of 2007 and 77 days in the second quarter of 2006.

Months of supply: Taking the average number of homes sold in the first half of the year and comparing it to the number of active listings at the end of June gives an interesting look at what's happening on a neighborhood level. For used or existing homes, the Meridian area has 20 months of supply, while the Deming area has 8.5 months of supply. In Bellingham neighborhoods, Happy Valley has 12.5 months of supply, while the Parkview neighborhood has 2.3 months of supply and the Columbia neighborhood has 2.75 months of supply.

In the second quarter of 2008, there were 1,206 overall properties sold in Whatcom County, continuing a downward trend from the peak in 2004, when there were 2,587 sold in that same quarter.

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