House Hunting

The BBQ Pit
1

Well, my wife and I are finally getting our act together and we’re looking to buy a house. We’ve already been to the Credit Union and have gone through the pre-approval process. We’ve even had the big discussion about points. If I understand correctly, for each point on the loan we take, we have to give them one of our unborn children. I’m fine with that.

So now we’ve started to look at houses. Our Real Estate Agent e-mails us updated listings every day. Looking through these listing goes something like this:

We come to the first one. “Hey, that looks pretty good. Click on that one for More Information.”

Click

“We are sorry. The house you have selected has been sold while you were clicking on the More Information tab. Neener neener neener.”

“Damn. How about the next one?”

Click

Information comes up on the screen. As we read it, it slowly fades away to be replaced by -

“We are sorry. Time travellers from the future have retroactively purchased this house two months ago. Neener neener neener.”

We scroll down. This one reads:

“Run Down Shack in the middle of Nowhere. No access to major routes. Dirt packed floors and plenty of Asbestos. Perfect for Crazed Loner/Anti-Government types.”

“Well, I suppose we should look at the information.”

Click

“Ha Ha. There is no house here. We just wanted to see how desperate you were. Neener neener neener.”

Aaaaaauuuuugh.

Look, I know all you other people want a house too, but just BACK OFF! We really need to get out of our current apartment. My wife’s biological clock is ticking and we can’t even think about children while we live in this Museum to Lead Paint. Not to mention the Crazy Bigot Cat Lady who is our landlord. And the roof has started to leak! So everybody else - just STAY AWAY. When another good house comes on the market WE’RE NEXT!!!

sigh Sorry. The whole process has driven us a little nuts.

From off in the distance: [sub]neener neener neener[/sub]

2

Wait till you experience the horror of the contingency contract on a house you really, really want.

3

AAaarrgh surpressed memories AAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHnoooooo

4

Or, how about having your real-estate agent write a contract for a house only to have been beaten out by a few hours by another buyer, although that deal falls through but the owner takes the house off the market and fires the realtor; THEN, seven months later to see the same house listed in the Sunday newspaper with an open-house scheduled for THAT DAY, and calling your realtor to have him write a contract again; to find out the the owners from seven months ago are no longer the same owners, but the house is now owned by a real-estate BROKER who has to sell this house in order to facilitate the sales of several other houses (all set up like dominoes… if the first one doesn’t fall, the rest don’t either!) and then to have THIS contract accepted for FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS LESS than one that was written months ago!

<deeeeeeep breath>

Hah. Had to relate our success story!

5

Hmmm…is this venting or can help be offered? Can’t…resist…impulse…to…meddle.:wink:

You don’t need to use just one agent. Most real estate agents specialize in one small geographic area. If you are looking in more than one suburb/town, I think it is best to have an agent from each town show you everything available in your price range.

Also, you know about realtor.com right? It lets you search every listed house by town or zip code. (It will not necessarily show properties for sale by owner, etc.)

Good luck.

6

After over 3 years of looking for a house only to find on almost every occasion that the places we liked were under contract by the time the listing was published, last month my wife and I were finnaly able to get a house we really like because we had an inside line on it and werew willing to offer full price (roughly 1/3 more than we wanted to spend).

And as a side note, hours after we got a signed contract 3 more poffers came in for the same property significantly above the asking price.

I feel you pain.

I feel your pain

7

Bah. I’m on the other side. My house has been for sale for EIGHT MONTHS. I live in a fairly new house (built in 1997) in what was considered a hot neighborhood. At this point, even my real estate agent is throwing his arms up in frustration. We get a ton of showings - over 100 at this point - and have consistently been told “It was their second favorite house!” or “They really liked it, but then they never called back” or “Everything was great but they wanted the spare bathroom to be painted a darker color of beige, and they found a house down the road with the perfect color!” or “They thought the house was wonderful, but they were really looking for something with a holodeck.”

Translation: everyone who looks at our house tells us it’s perfect. It shows well. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s priced correctly. It’s in a nice neighborhood.

The damn thing just won’t sell!

I’m so frustrated I could just shit, but shit on the carpet makes the house show badly so I’ll just hold it.

8

My search for a house in our nation’s capital was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. I foolishly had an understanding that one sets an asking price and you make a reasonable offer under the asking price. Instead the owner has no intention of selling at the asking price. This just represents a start to the bidding. One house we looked at went up almost 100k over the asking price.

So we get outbid at every attempt and finally find an acceptable place where our offer is accepted. We submit a contract with the standard contingencies (ie. home inspection, financing etc…). We are informed that they will not sell with any contingency attached and futhermore they were taking all the household appliances with them. We agreed on everything but the appliances because we were so worn out at this point.

The day after closing we open up the house and find all of their GOD DAMN stuff is still there. To boot their two pissant dogs have been roaming free shitting in every corner over the weekend. This of course leads to lawyers and all sorts of unpleasantness. Now that this place is mine I will never move again.

9

Humble - feel free to meddle. My copy of “House Buying for Dummies” says that using multiple agents is a bad idea, but I no longer remember why the book said this.

We do know about realtor.com and we have used it. The updates we are now getting are (I think) more recent.

Athena - If you want to ship your property to Massachusetts, we’ll be glad to look at it. Provided you take care of that beige color in the spare bathroom. :wink:

10

Hee hee, then you also get to hear stories like mine (to rub it in, of course) -

We bought our house after looking less than one week, exactly what we were looking for, in exactly the neighborhood we wanted to live in for 20k less than it’s appraised value, the day it went on the market, in a city that it’s really really hard to find a house in to begin with.

I can rant for hours about what it’s like to remove 5 layers of wallpaper though.

11

Heh. Luckilly, I have never had it that bad. I was just on the other side of the fence and sold our home in less than 1 day after being listed.

Have you considered building or going brand new? It’ll cost you a bit more (landscaping, window coverings, etc) but its a sure thing if you can afford it.

12

To the OP: I realize you posted to vent, but let me offer you a few tips anyway:

First, one way to get a good deal in a hot market is as follows: You find an overpriced house that’s been sitting around for a couple months. I don’t care how hot the market is - there are always a few people who overprice their houses. Then you low-ball them. Most of the time, this won’t work. But trust me - a few people will crack, and all you need is one.

Second, don’t be afraid to make your bid through the listing broker. (Assuming that your own broker didn’t introduce you to the house.) When you bid through the listing broker, he or she stands to make a double commission. So he or she will put a lot of pressure on the seller to step up to the negotiating table. If there are competing bids, the listing broker may push yours especially hard.

Third, it is often possible to get the appropriate Sunday classified ads on Saturday, Friday, or even Thursday. I did this every freakin’ weak for over a year.

Fourth, don’t totally depend on your broker. You don’t know if your broker has other clients who are competing with you whom your broker favors for some reason or another. You don’t want to get caught “cheating” on your broker, but consider discretely setting up relations with another broker or two. Note that the brokers two towns over from you have access to the same listings as the brokers in your town.

Fifth, be aware that there may be houses you are not seeing for other reasons. For example, I discovered that in my town there was a sub-culture of Oriental real estate brokers who listed houses owned by Chinese and Korean residents. Our broker (who was white) was not showing us any of these houses.

Last, learn how to spot a “fixer-upper” that doesn’t need a lot of fixing up. That’s where you’ll get the best deals and the least competition.

Umm, I hate to break it to ya, but the people are lying. They feel your house is overpriced.

(There are two other possibilities: (1) your house is totally unique and needs the right buyer; or (2) you live in one of the very few areas of the Western World that has a depressed real estate market right now. But unless your house happens to be in Battery Park City, I kinda doubt it)

13

lucwarm,

This is the story of friends of ours.

Hot real estate market (Minneapolis). Friends (husband and wife) make a list of all the things they want in a house. Its like 30 some items long. Top of her list - “Cute” His list includes things like “new furnace” “new roof” “location we want”

They look. She falls in love with houses, but the only thing on the list they can check off is cute, so - no offer.

Finally, they come across a house that’s been on the market (sitting empty - sitting empty helps) for a long time. It meets almost every requirement on the list - except cute. It isn’t cute. But they make an offer. They not only lowball, they dig a ditch on a house that’s already had its price dropped. But she makes it by telling the realator “I hate this house, I hope they are so insulted by this price they never talk to us again.”

They have a house in a great location, in great shape, for a bargain basement price. Its still not cute - but eventually they will remodel.

14

Good point, I forgot to mention that.

**

Nice. Anyway, IMHO, the premium you have to pay for “cute” isn’t worth it in this market.

By the way Athena, sorry to beat up on you, but one other thought occurred to me: The fact that your house has been shown many times doesn’t necessarily mean anything. When brokers take buyers out, they will often show them an overpriced house or two so that the other houses they show in that price range will seem like good value.

In any event, my experience over the last couple years is that the market eventually catches up with most houses. So if you don’t mind waiting, you will eventually get your price or something close.

15

As long as the builder doesn’t cut any corners. My brother moved into a brand-new townhouse about four years ago and it started to have some problems last year. The problems, though relatively minor, were a big headache for him.

16

Er, at this point (and for the past several months) my house has been one of the most inexpensive homes in my neighborhood. Case in point: two doors down from me is a house that boasts approximately 200 more square feet of finished area. It’s priced $40K more than mine.

Trust me, lucwarm, if I could lower the price and the damn thing would sell, I’d do it. It’s now priced $30K lower than it was 8 months ago. I assume that if I lower the price to something ridiculously low, it would sell. But when similiar homes are selling for the more money than we are currently offering, all I can figure is that God hates me, and that’s why my house won’t sell.

I’m getting close to putting it up for sale at that ridiculously low price, though. I need to sell this thing.

17

Trion,

I wanted to stress the importance of using all the available resources, as you never know what luck you’ll have.

My husband and I had been househunting for awhile and were frustrated. Everything that looked promising was being snapped up just as we placed our bids. Finally I started seriously delving into the Web and found several houses that our realtor hadn’t mentioned including one that was somehow was left off of the database all the realtors in town use. The owner was desperate to sell, the house was perfect, and our realtor was perplexed that she didn’t find it herself.

We celebrate our first year in this house today!

Happy hunting!
Tally

18

Athena, would you mind posting a URL to the MLS website for the listing of your home? I would be curious to see it.

Only if you don’t mind of course, I understand if you would rather not. :slight_smile:

19

Bernse, I’m not really comfortable posting the URL on this board. If’n you send me an email, I’d be happy to give it you there. Can I ask why?

20

Email sent.

Basically, I am just damn curious if I can come up with even the slightest hypothesis as to why its not selling.

:slight_smile: