Monica Yant Kinney: Reality check on the home front

I love my house, but I still obsess about the local real estate market.

The Philadelphia area is no Southern California, but we've had our share of odd doings. Sales of existing homes in the eight-county region have been sliding despite an unexpected spike nationwide.

Everywhere else, people are gobbling up deals and flocking to foreclosures. Here, not so much.

What really struck me about the recent grim news were the days-on-market averages. Overall, it's taking three months to sell a place in Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey. In once-hot Burlington County, homes languish 120 days.

I know Terrell Owens has been unable to unload his Moorestown manse, but that home is haunted. How to explain what's wrong with the rest of the county?

Attitude, says Rich Jordan.

In 2005, Money magazine named Moorestown the "best place to live in America." Unfortunately, the press and home prices went to everyone's head.

"People don't understand that times have changed," says Jordan, a veteran Realtor with Prudential, Fox & Roach in Moorestown. "They're holding out."

If buyers helped fuel the bust by binging on overvalued homes, sellers perpetuate the pain by refusing to lower their expectations when pricing their properties.

"The people who get the message are selling," Jordan says. "Those who don't are sitting."

Jordan is a lifelong resident of Burlington County. He's a "luxury home specialist" who's notched more than $2 million in sales every year since 1990.

But the job has changed almost overnight, Jordan admits.

"I had one deal where we made a $1.15 million offer on a house listed at $1.225 million," he tells me over pizza slices at Passariello's.

The seller balked, so the buyer walked.

The McMansion, which Jordan shows me on a driving tour, is still on the market seven months later. Asking price now: $1.199 million.

Jordan taps the brakes and scoffs. "He's not getting it."

In the glory days, "we'd put up a sign and people would come rushing, carrying their checkbooks."

Today's buyers know they're in charge. They want to see every listing. They take their time.

Even with the Obama stimulus plan's $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, smart shoppers bargain hard. So Jordan finds himself dishing out a lot more tough love to sellers stuck in a time warp.

He tells me about a townhouse in Mount Laurel that went eight months with no nibbles at $250,000.

"We took over the listing in February and priced it at $229,000," he says. "We had an offer in one week and got it sold."

As he steers his Mercedes through Moorestown, Jordan provides a from-memory recitation of boom and bust, fantasy and reality.

The three-bedroom, one-bath modified bungalow in the Valley Stream neighborhood that the owners insisted was worth $329,000?

It finally sold - eight months later! - for $260,000.

The split-level around the corner going for $450,000? "That house is overpriced," he deduces. "It should be in the high $300,000s."

Even at the top end, savvy sellers must be willing to wiggle in trying times. A sale is still a sale. No one but the maid profits from a big house gathering dust.

Jordan points out a new listing: a 4,500-square-foot brick Colonial with a three-car garage in the posh Laurel Creek section.

"A year ago, that would have been over $1 million, easy," he says. "Now, it's priced right at $899,000."

Jordan says the county's days-on-market average has shrunk from 120 to 109 in the last few weeks. He predicts this home won't last long.

"They'll have a deal soon," he says, confidently, "probably by the end of the month."