Honestly, it's so widely known, if someone is asking for a name it wouldn't be nogea to them
I don't know if you're referring to VS or ST. But I think even if it is not nogea there would still be an issue or Loshon Hora.
No, to get more money. Some properties she's gotten owners to hold out for more have sat for a year or more without getting sold in a neighborhood where homes often don't make it to market before getting sold
I think that's a little bit of an oversimplification of the issue.
I can understand your frustration, I have been there too, as were many of my friends. The bottom line is that it is a free market, and people aren't forced to sell at any price. Yet, as someone once told me "anything is for sale for the right price". People sell for various reasons, if they're sitting for a year or more then they don't really want to sell, but rather want to get the best possible deal, just like the buyers want to get the best possible deal. Since the person you are referring to is working as the seller's agent, it is their moral obligation to get the best possible deal for the seller. Sometimes that will mean a quick sale, and sometimes it will mean a higher selling price, and usually there's some kind of an equilibrium which will tip the scale and make the sale happen.
Houses aren't stocks or commodities. Every house is different (at the very least by virtue of the three L's, but usually there's more to it), and the market isn't as active and transparent (with publicly available bid and ask prices).
I was talking earlier this week to friend who bought a house a couple of years ago down the block from me, and is now going through the torture of dealing with renovations. He told me that he told someone who has been wanting to buy a house in Crown Heights for 20 years, that until he makes the mental switch to be willing to overpay, he is not likely to buy a house. I think he is absolutely right. Had I held out for the $16,000 overpayment back in 1997, or due to the higher rate I had to pay on my mortgage and PMI because I put down less than 20%, I might have not owned a home now. I recall several sales on my block, and with many of them I thought the guy overpaid, in retrospect anyone would have loved to purchase those houses for the prices those people "overpaid".
Will the market keep on going up? The cheap money is there, and the relentless demand for houses in good locations in Jewish communities will always be there, due to our lifestyle and family sizes, so the fundamentals to keep on driving prices up are there. Will there be hiccups such as 2008-2010? Probably yes, but when is anyone's guess.
If there was one distortion I would like to see corrected in the local housing sale market, it would be for some legal mechanism to prevent Real-Estate brokers/agents from being able to act as principals and flip houses. The cases where they put their own money in and flip houses is taking advantage of an ignorant seller for a quick profit. I don't know if there's a way to stop that.
And as for the rental market, I would make it illegal to charge the renter a broker's fee, it should be paid by the landlord. The landlord is more likely to pay the right price (and will issue a 1099-MISC, which renters will not) the landlord will build that cost into their entire cost structure (though with current NYC rent control laws, the market isn't a real free market).
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