Home buying thread

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Brando

Asshat Brando

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You need to read what he said, he was bidding on a B of A REO and they require their own pre-approval to go along with the offer . He didn"t say he didn"t have any pre-approval. We do the same thing at my bank on our REO"s unless the investor is not us and they explicitly state they don"t want that to be a requirement.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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Meh, that"s a bullshit requirement. Do banks wanna sell their fucking properties or what? Why keep putting nonsense in the way of it?

For all their fucking crying about it, you"d think they"d want to make it as easy as possible to unload all this shit. Instead, we"ll just throw up some more BS requirements in front of any sale we do!
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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Yes Brando is correct - we are pre-approved already for both a conventional and a FHA (just in case) loan. Unless you are offering cash, I can"t imagine anyone would even take your bids otherwise.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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Well, your agent is obviously holding you back if he"s fucking up the negotiating. Is he showing you properties, or are you looking for them yourself and just having him set up the showings?
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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Without working in the business most people wouldn"t understand but pre-approvals are worthless pieces of paper. No bank is going to take the time to have their few underwriters look at every possible deal therefore most pre-approvals are just a word document that a loan officer like me (with no credit decisioning authority) whips up after checking your credit and assuming you"re not lying on your income/assets over the phone. If you"re dealing with an idiot LO, there are a lot out there so chances are good, then you may not even qualify without even knowing. Even some good ones will still issue a pre-approval to keep a realtor relationship and then say it"s the underwriters fault when it all blows up which with the business these days a lot of realtors will accept. Not like any general person gets to talk to an underwriter anyway.

Banks know this so having one of their own also check the info and issue the pre-approval makes them feel like their not wasting their time with you as you"re a little more careful with what you"re doing when it comes to your own company. Nothing like a potential job loss to keep people on the straight and narrow.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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Yeah, that"s why we"re going to another agent. How it has worked with her is she has us signed up to her MLS site, which feeds us properties as they appear, within our custom parameters. When we find ones we are interested in, we contact her for a showing (trying to get 2-3 lined up at once, we live an hour away, even more with traffic), and go take a look. I do ask her before we go see properties if there are any public inspection reports available on them to look at first - would save us a drive if we saw anything super bad in a report - but she pretty much ignores that until after we see a property, and THEN she"ll look, if we are still interested. Am I expecting too much of her? Likewise, a home we looked at and were interested in went into escrow 3 weeks ago. However 1 week ago it pops up on Craigslist, so we ask her what"s up? She can"t even be bothered to call the agent and ask, so we do.

I know we"re aren"t her biggest clients, but I"m honestly not sure how much we should expect from an agent. I may not be your biggest fish, but you should treat me like I am, and she"s not, so we"re replacing her.
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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In my experience most realtors will get a feel for what you like/don"t like after a weekend or two of showings and should be able to highlight ones they"ve seen or ones that came on the market that you would like. Keep in mind that they don"t get paid until you close on your purchase so they can"t just focus solely on you or they"ll probably be looking for another job pretty soon. As long as they are being responsive then I think that"s really all you can ask.

The most important thing in my opinion is having an agent that knows the area you are looking in, has a history of sales/listings in that area and knows the other agents. Sales is a people business after all. Trust me I"ve seen more purchases happen over the agents knowing each other than any other factor. If you"re dealing with an agent that doesn"t know the area and has never worked there you"re at a disadvantage right off the bat. Especially for REO"s as the banks asset manager is going to take the offer that the real estate agent tells him is the best regardless of whether it really is or not, the asset manager is just looking that they hit their number they are looking for as far as price and that the paperwork is in order.
 
Cad

Cad

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The idea that an agent is going to find your house is ridiculous. Hop on the MLS and find your houses yourself, deal directly with the listing agent, and jew them. With only one agent in the picture your response times will drop considerably, with two in the picture it"s a "forward this simple message" mess.

You don"t buy houses that often, learn how to read the comps, research the school districts/tax rates/etc yourself, learn your area before you buy, you"ll be glad you did.

And if you are dealing with an REO or short sale, bypass the listing agent and work directly with the bank if possible, that way they won"t "forget" to tell you anything.
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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Cad, did you buy your house talking directly to the asset manager at the bank that owned your house? Unless you say otherwise I"m going to guess no. I"ve worked at both B of A and Wells Fargo and still have friends working there, they can"t even talk to the asset managers so unless you have to oddball chance in hell that the REO in question is owned by some rinky dink bank that you can just call into and ask for the person running the show on the property in question then what your saying in regards to cutting out the listing agent is just nonsense.

A person doing their homework on the homes for sale in the area, taxes, hoa dues, mello roos, etc is just taken for granted. A good agent though will see houses (broker open) before they are on the MLS and will be able to let you know what is going on with the offers on a property due to their relationship with said listing agent. That"s why they get their money, if you don"t have an agent like that then I suggest that"s where you start.
 
U

Unidin_foh

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TheCutlery said:
You"re not preapproved?

That"s probably why you"re not getting any action. I wouldn"t start talking with someone unless they were pre-approved too. Not gonna get my hopes up on someone that can"t come through with financing. That"s not a knock on you, you"re just some random guy that bid on a house. No one knows you.
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Most REOs now require you also get preapproved by the selling bank too. He may already have a preapproval, but needs another.
 
Cad

Cad

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Brando said:
Cad, did you buy your house talking directly to the asset manager at the bank that owned your house? Unless you say otherwise I"m going to guess no. I"ve worked at both B of A and Wells Fargo and still have friends working there, they can"t even talk to the asset managers so unless you have to oddball chance in hell that the REO in question is owned by some rinky dink bank that you can just call into and ask for the person running the show on the property in question then what your saying in regards to cutting out the listing agent is just nonsense.

A person doing their homework on the homes for sale in the area, taxes, hoa dues, mello roos, etc is just taken for granted. A good agent though will see houses (broker open) before they are on the MLS and will be able to let you know what is going on with the offers on a property due to their relationship with said listing agent. That"s why they get their money, if you don"t have an agent like that then I suggest that"s where you start.
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Brando - I got on the phone with them (don"t know what their title was so I can"t say it was the asset manager, but it was the person the listing agent was talking to), but still worked through the listing agent as well. I did get a few allowances pushed through by speaking to them, that I doubt I would have gotten if I let the listing agent do it.

And I hear all the time about "properties not yet on the MLS" and "this one sold by word of mouth before it ever hit the lists" etc.. everyone that I"ve talked to who bought a house bought it after it was listed on the MLS. And telling you about the other offers on the property is against realtors rules of ethics. So if thats what you"re selling as a benefit... lol
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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There"s usually a broker open before a property hits the MLS for brokers to come by and see the property for their clients. I"m not saying it will sell before it hits the MLS but the hope would be that you know about the property ASAP.
 
Jalynfane

Jalynfane

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If it sells before it hits the MLS then the likelihood of the buyer getting a great price seems like it would evaporate to me.
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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Anything that sells quickly is either because it was priced below market to begin with or there is just not a lot of inventory so demand is high.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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Brando said:
Anything that sells quickly is either because it was priced below market to begin with or there is just not a lot of inventory so demand is high.
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No, there"s a shitload of inventory, it"s just the wrong inventory. After buyers deal with a few shitty bank owned properties, you"d be surprised how quickly a house that"s been updated and is in good condition will sell when there"s a glut of buyers all sick of picking through the bank"s trash.

Houses in my neighborhood go up on the market and sell in under a week all the time, but there"s still plenty of inventory on the MLS.
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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National figures would disagree but there are always markets or micro markets that buck the trend. My bank went from 8000 properties for sale nationally to now just short of 3k. Most other big banks have seen similar drops in properties for sale.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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It"s been that way since we bought our house almost 3 years ago. Anything that"s good gets snapped up right away, since no one wants to fuck with short sales/foreclosures after the first couple of times you"ve gotta deal with asshole banks and their bullshit requirements. Not to mention the state of most of the houses.

Gotta realize man, when there"s a couple hundred people looking for houses, and their choices are all run down, stripped, shitty houses and then something that"s updated and well maintained pops onto the market, it doesn"t take long for people tired of looking at crap to decide "This is the one" and put as much as they can into it in order to get it as quickly as possible.
 
OneofOne

OneofOne

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TheCutlery said:
Gotta realize man, when there"s a couple hundred people looking for houses, and their choices are all run down, stripped, shitty houses and then something that"s updated and well maintained pops onto the market, it doesn"t take long for people tired of looking at crap to decide "This is the one" and put as much as they can into it in order to get it as quickly as possible.
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And this is exactly the issue we are having. The few flips we"ve seen have been snatched up like crazy, while all the overpriced POS mold-spewing, roof-collapsing, termite infested homes just sit, and sit, and sit.

We"ve been considering looking more into a 403k rehab loan but it"s hard to consider when the base prices are too damn high to begin with. These homes are total shit, stop asking so much for them you stupid fucks. (My favorite is when they lower the price of a property by $100 just so it shows as updated on the MLS to get more views. This is like Eve market bullshit in RL.)
 
Brando

Asshat Brando

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I can"t speak for every market, just what I see on a daily basis in a job that revolves around this subject. The asset manager at the bank in question is going to have comps and hopefully the listing agent they contract with knows what they are doing to set a good price and make sure things are fixed. If an agent tells us to sell the house we need to fix X, Y and Z we are doing it unless it wouldn"t increase the value at all. You see plenty of REO"s going into contract and close but they are usually well below what a standard sale would dictate.

It"s actually 203k One, not 403k. They are probably the most pain in the ass loan to do and I stopped doing them. It"s cool that the value and loan will be based on when the work is done, it"s not cool trying to get the contractor approved and deal with all the bullshit to get the money dispersed after each item is done and having cost overruns.
 
Ameraves

Ameraves

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We finally closed on our house a couple of weeks ago. We actually found it by complete luck. We had just started looking for houses and didn"t even have an agent yet. My brother in law was driving over from his house and saw an open house sign and figured he would swing by and check it out. The house was a complete mess, which worked out in our favor. Most people that came to see the house literally walked in, saw the mess, took a quick glance and left. We took a bit longer and saw some potential and asked the guy that was showing it some questions.

The house was set to foreclose in like 10 days, so he had to get an offer in by the next day so he could request an extension to the foreclosure. They were only asking 300k, which when compared to other houses of similar size was quite low. We actually assumed the bank would come back with a counter but they never did. So we ended up with a 4 bedroom, 3 bath 2000 square foot house for 300k. Lot size is almost 8500 square feet.

The short sale process sucked, and it honestly felt like it was never going to end. So when we finally closed it was quite a relief, and then we had to start planning on how we were going to clean the place up. It wasn"t so much that it was in bad shape like being termite infested, it was just dirty. They had so much trash left in the house it was crazy. We have a bunch of pictures of exactly what the house looked like when we got it, and I will post up some of those when I get them off my wife"s camera. Will post some after pictures as well for those that are interested.

We are really lucky since we only have to pay for materials, and my in laws are doing all of the labor for us. My father in law has been in construction forever, and used to have his own contracting business, and my brother in law is an electrician. So it is taking a bit longer to get everything done since they can only work on it after work and on weekends, but it is saving us a ton of money.
 
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