Image via WikipediaGeoff Jones reports that a good house in Cambridge has fallen some £80k below the list price at auction – although not sure if it sold.
I was so lucky as a group of us owned a rent-controlled house and sadly the tenant passed away earlier this year. The agents took a very aggressive stance on pricing the house to sell and sell it did even if we had to drop a few grand just before exchange. If we had a held out for last year’s price we would be feeling like some of the banks but with no shareholders to cover our losses.
It reminds me of the problems of selling business. Sell at the top of the market or raise funds at the top like nCipher but in a few weeks the market can have dropped and the company is left with all the selling costs of due diligence and professional fees. No wonder the latter are unwilling to put a lot of resources in to close a deal until the last minute which explains the long nights of completion meetings with everyone locked in an office and with the local stock markets closed so hopefully nothing drastic will happen. No wonder that 26 June 1987 is so special to me. When the meeting starts it is deemed to be on the day it started providing it is continuous so we had a “36 hour day”! We then held our breath that the stock markets would not collapse until after we sold our shares on the Monday morning at 07:00 two days later.
Let us hope that this recession is gone soon before people start really hurting.
