To be honest. My wife and I used a realtor who I'd consider a family friend now. We purchased into a high volume market so we were more concerned with location and being able to make a quick decision (and win a bidding war).
Crazy that houses selling for 800-900K can sell in days without inspection... (We inspected when we purchased as it was a gut renovation from a builder but when we sold the person who purchased waved everything... inspection and mortgage contingency)
To be honest. My wife and I used a realtor who I'd consider a family friend now. We purchased into a high volume market so we were more concerned with location and being able to make a quick decision (and win a bidding war).
Crazy that houses selling for 800-900K can sell in days without inspection... (We inspected when we purchased as it was a gut renovation from a builder but when we sold the person who purchased waved everything... inspection and mortgage contingency)
Did the same, knew my realtor for 10 years before I needed him. They're like mechanics, they'll either save you or screw you, so find one you can trust more than anything.
Ultimately I dunno, I feel like this dude isn't really helping me out too much. He's sending me listings from his thing and not really looking himself. I comb through all his listings and basically say "ya" or "naah". Is it better for me to just do my search and call him when I want to see a place, basically just using his service as a glorified closing service?
Thats exactly how my wife and I felt, ONLY we couldn't fire him b/c he was paid by the company (the whole move and all expenses). The properties i saw w/ him were dog, compared to the ones i wanted to see (i gave him a list).
when we put our first bid on a new construction, the bid didn't hold (thankfully) and we learned how to go through that failed bid...
it cost us NOTHING, we had time and the company was paying for our temp housing, so what if a bid falls through, it's just like life, you fail and you learn and grow.
The second house we put a bid on, i was the one that found it, in fact i was the one that found all the new properties to see.
and their "comp" system is bullshit anyway, just some MLS garbage.
you already have a BETTER system, fucking zillow
click on recently sold, and then just visually find your house and you can see which houses were sold in your are and for what price.
Dealing with this agent I can tell you real estate agents are garbage and have garbage tools, with zillow you have WAY MORE information than what they have.
A lot of counties also have a real estate tax website where you can pull up a map. Then you just click on each home around the one you're looking at and check the past sales.
Zillow above works as well, but sometimes it'll miss sales.
A lot of counties also have a real estate tax website where you can pull up a map. Then you just click on each home around the one you're looking at and check the past sales.
Zillow above works as well, but sometimes it'll miss sales.
So this is the email back and fourth that we had, spoilered for size
Looking to get your thoughts on these properties:
ADDRESS REMOVED
And
ADDRESS REMOVED
Priced at HOUSE PRICE ONE as well as HOUSE PRICE TWO and on the market for a while (around 60 days).
Given that we want to stay around a cap of PRICE POINT on spending, is it even realistic to assume a possible price drop of that sort on properties like these?
My initial thoughts would be to offer something like (OFFER @ 95% OF LISTING PRICE) and go from there. For the SECOND property, I know that is a little low but for the FIRST one I don’t have reasonable comparatives nearby. Sorry if it seems like I’m balking at putting in offers, I don’t want to offer too low and put us in a bad situation reputation wise, if you don’t think that would be the case then all is good.
Thanks for your help,
Yeah I was being beta, but I really can't read this guy. I was taking the reigns a bit more earlier but his reaction never changed.
His response to that email:
Well even when the property is over priced, the sellers are not usually willing to take a lower offer or they would lower the asking price. Often they are just unreasonable.
My response to that:
In regards to the home pricing being out of sync, HAHA okay, got it. So I have to ask, in a situation like that, is offering an amount that I feel is reasonable for the home just going to be ignored completely?
and his final reply:
Probably!
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EDIT: These are all literally cut and pasted from the email with identifiers removed.
Ultimately I dunno, I feel like this dude isn't really helping me out too much. He's sending me listings from his thing and not really looking himself. I comb through all his listings and basically say "ya" or "naah". Is it better for me to just do my search and call him when I want to see a place, basically just using his service as a glorified closing service?
I asked him today if I can put in a lower bid on a property but still "within reason" to the market and he basically shot it down quick. I know I am the grasshopper and he is the jedi master
That's literally the opposite of how you should look at this. Imagine going into used car dealership and getting advice from a 100% commission based salesman... I mean, he probably knows a lot about the process of buying a car (and maybe even something about cars), so he might be useful, but has anyone ever thought of a used car salesman as a jedi master?
The interests of the buyer and the salesman are not exactly aligned.
The agent is incentivized to get you to buy something as quickly as possible for as much as possible by doing as little work as possible. He wants you to see one house, fall in love with it, and put in an offer high enough that it gets instantly accepted. Literally anything else is more work for him for zero or even negative reward. As long as he manages not to have you drop him for a different agent, the only incentive he has in not screwing you is the chance of generating return business or referrals, but easy money in hand today far outweighs working hard for a small chance of future money for most people.
Lol don't attribute good or evil to jedi master. I understand his goal is money, he makes 3% of the sale price as commission.
I trust his intuition on home, soundness of home, and SOME of the fixings.
The issue I have is with comps and him offering price and I realize that's like haggling with a car salesman on the amount of commission he'll receive.
Ultimately, I'll go with a price that I find acceptable to market and location.
Most of the time real estate agents are useless for normal stuff now days - it also is why for "normal range" houses etc. they tend to do very-very little work.
As stated here, it is sad when 10 minutes on Zillow produce more information than a few weeks with a Realtor "working for you"
Man as I'm looking around more and more...I'm finding a ton of listing by a company called "OpenDoor" the best thing i can say about them? Fuck them..
They are corporate home flippers basically.
They use a private sale to buy into a home super cheap and then relist it about a month later at usually 20-40 USD per SqFt higher than market average for an area.
So instead of mom and pops listing their home and getting 200k less listing fees, they get 110k-130k flat out.
My agent was telling me that "They typically don't buy homes with foundation issues" but I just was interested so I did some drive-bys of a couple homes and they have issues aside from foundation. Usually relating to how long they sit for because people don't wanna pay 30-55,000 USD more than the home is worth. (these are mostly around 200k homes). Termites, animals making their homes in the home, gutter drain issues...
This home is about 35k Higher than the area asking price and is smaller by about 130 sqft.
This property was / is on the market still after like 63 days in a market that moves after like 5-7 days.
Right as you enter a animal pee scent hits you...Either:
Their Crew put a bunch of flooring over it...sealing that scent into the home
The front door, that has a gap on the bottom, is being used by local strays to spray and pray into the home.
The home in the back is littered with these holes that basically follow the roof line. They are about 6 inches to 1 foot in depth and on the corners of the slab actually look to go under the slab. The dirt touching the slab is VERY loose almost like a powder, when I stepped into it my foot sank about 1/2 an inch and more if I actually pressed down. I don't know what all this means, it could just be they need gutters and to compact and refill the dirt near the slab.
Then finally you have the room pictured with the dirt in the walls, mainly due to the ants that are coming from that dirt / wall in that room. They likely broke the warp that was on the home and sicne the home has sat for about...2 months with no one in it, the issue became worse over time.
Either way, the holding company is basically to blame for picking cheap ass workers to re-do their shit.
On my end, I am seriously debating putting in a lowballer shit bid for it and see if they basically snap it up OR if they continue holding the property.
Homes that sit are bad, houses must be lived in (by humans) or they do start to rot... I don't know why...but it is how it is.
A rich guy in my area bought one that sat for 8 mo and rented because he didn't want to start a trend. Fortunately houses in my are are very fluid... just - hoping - no huge crash
Homes that sit are bad, houses must be lived in (by humans) or they do start to rot... I don't know why...but it is how it is.
A rich guy in my area bought one that sat for 8 mo and rented because he didn't want to start a trend. Fortunately houses in my are are very fluid... just - hoping - no huge crash
yea, ha just like how i had the toilet bowl w/ no water cuz of evap in my basement, cuz i never go there really, forgot who said it but put some rv antifreeze and still there.
i also learned to put bricks right underneath my garden facets so i can visually see if they're dripping or not. (the front yard one requires hulk strength to make sure it don't drip)
Yeah, I think I'm mainly salty in regards to their service bringing the price disparity closer to a real-time pricing model.
I feel like if their company takes over more markets that you will see a LOT of people getting salty that they can't even begin to afford a new home in a place like the Bay Area or other high turn-over markets because there won't be any "Hidden Gems" that you have a slight possibility at snapping up. Opendoor and other companies will start basically being "All-in-one" shops where you go there, sell your home and exit the market OR trade-up. This isn't an ideal situation for the buyer or the seller because margin is baked into their pricing model. There really isn't any convenience other than an instant sale on the sellers side but for that instant sale you are being offered, in many cases, below market rate for your home.
Here is a good example:
Home bought in 1984 for 54,600.
Supposedly they bought this home for around 140k (likely less, but impossible to be certain since all of their transactions are private party and then the financials are wrapped into a bulk purchase option and sold). Which, assuming they bought at 140, means they bought under market value by a minimum of 13 dollars per sqft and a max of about 16 per sqft, which in this case would be a minimum of 12% of the homes price.
They then relisted the home at 190k less than a month later after doing marginal repairs where the home sat for 65 days before bidding ended and they tallied all their offers which were under asking price.
