I am in the process of buying my first home, a nightmare process, at least in Miami.
I am using a realtor and since I have had several offers fall through I understand the process when there’s a realtor involved. One lesson I learned is to make an offer that is near to the closed sales for the previous months, not the listed price. There are lots of greedy people out there! The home won’t appraise significantly more than similar closed sales and the bank won’t finance over that. That lesson cost me $300!! :mad:
OK so I usually ask my realtor to pull all the recent closed sales for whatever house I am making an offer for and he gets the list from the MLS. I looked in my areas and there are several houses that are ‘For Sale by Owner’ so my realtor doesn’t show them to me.
If I were to make an offer on a FSBO house, how would I know what to offer? Is there a way to see the recent closed prices without subscribing to the MLS service? Or do you have to use a realtor?
You can look on the website for the Miami-Dade County Clerk and recorder’s office. If I recall correctly, that county has “imaging”, which means you can pull up an actual picture of the recorded deed (to do this, you will need addresses from several streets in the area). On that deed, the amount of the document stamps will be printed (usually in the upper right hand corner, in the county clerk’s stamp).
The amount of these stamps is a percentage of the sales price (and I think I have CRS disease… can’t dig the exact formula out of my brain at the moment, but your realtor should know. If not, call the County Clerk and ask).
The recorded docs include FSBO’s, so you should be ok. If the Miami-Dade clerk has no imaging, check out the property/tax assessor’s websites. There too resides the information you seek.
Your realtor should be able to assist you even without the above information. Not every house in the area is going to be a FSBO, so surely there will be comparable properties that have sold. MLS really doesn’t mean all that much, but I’m sure that your realtor suggested it because that’s the tool he/she is familiar with.
Thus concludes today’s lesson on “Educational Fun, Public Records, and You”
Cherry, I knew something was missing from Miami…and it was you!!
I do routinely look at the County’s website to see what was the last sale price of the propoerty I’m interested in . As a side note, I found one lady who bought her townhouse in Jan 2004 for $108k, put in a new washer & range, and was trying to sell it in Feb 2004 for $123k!!! If only it were that easy, I felt like telling her…
But I still fail to see how I can easily find the recent closed sales. I would have to start in a certain diameter of the target home and search every one in the county website and check the last close date. I would have to increase the search area until I found one, and that is assuming I knew all the addresses.
Unless you have a contact with a Realtor to pay them directly for their services or use them exclusively there is no incentive for them to pursue FSBO houses for you unless you (the buyer) arranges to pay them for their time and effort.
Per Cherry2000 you can go to the deed recordation office and calculate the selling prices of adjacent houses if you want a matrix of comparable sale values. Many states have an online property tax database you can use to get the same information, the only hitch is that usually the info is several months (or more) out of date and may not be of much use in an accelerating (pricewise) housing market
You can also join the MLS system. You do not have to be a Realtor to join, but membership in most MLS systems starts at several hundred dollars annually (per individual membership) and goes up from there. What the local fees are in your area I have no idea.
I am a commercial, not a residential, Realtor, but it is my understanding the housing market is red hot in many areas, and if a house is not absurdly priced offers near full price are often needed to make the deal. In these situations the price matrix of what things sold for 12 months ago may not be of much use to you in determining what to offer re a price that will be accepted. A competent Realtor should be on top of these pricing issues on a day to day basis and should be able to give accurate pricing guidelines.
It may be worthwhile to work out a deal with your Realtor where you agree to pay them (out of your pocket) half a standard commission (say 2.5-3.5%) for assisting you with putting together a FSBO deal. Commissions are usually split with other agents anyway in co-brokering a sale. I’m this context the Realtor can work directly for you to secure the best deal on a FSBO.
You’re right, the Miami-dade area is one of those rapidly accelerating areas. I don’t mind making an offer at full price but not if the full price is substantially above appraised value. Do that many people have that much cash lying around and available to make up the gap between appraised and listed price?
Ok ice, just for you I hunted up both the clerk and recorder’s website and the assessor’s website. Assessor’s site lets you search by address (clerk’s doesn’t).
So if you have a sampling of streets/addresses in the area, you can bring them up on the assessor’s site. Shouldn’t take you too many to find a property that has closed fairly recently (as I recall, South FL has a pretty brisk market). You will also get enough info there to do a search on the clerk’s site if you need more, and viola! There ya go. Should at least give you an idea what ball park you are looking at.
It’s a little bit of work, but noone said it was easy playing secret agent Still, not bad for something you can do without leaving your comfy chair…and the price is certainly right.
As far as your appraisal goes, it might help you to know that when your appraiser pulls “comps” for the area, the standard is 6 months (in other words, they look for properties that have closed within the last 6 mo to compare YOURS to). Some lenders will go 12 if no 6 mo.'s are available. I mention this as something to think about while poking around on websites and such.
Also, if you decide to go “non-FSBO”, the seller traditionally pays the real estate commissions (unless otherwise agreed upon in the contract). In other words, as the buyer it would not cost you to work with a realtor.
See? Ask for the time, and I start tellin’ ya how to build a watch…jeeze!
Thanks for all the data. It cleared things up a bit. I’m just very frustrated that all my offers have been rejected because I offered a fair price (close to the comps) and not the asking price (usually waaay above the comps). People must like overpaying…
You can also try hitting up the title companies. Look in your yellow pages under title and escrow, and ask for customer service. They should be happy to provide a list of comps, and it will incloude FSBOs. Just promise to use them when you actually buy (it is the buyer’s choice) and it’ll likely be free.
Always remember one important rule, all agents always work for the seller, even if they say they work for you (or are even from different companies) because both real estate agents get paid from the total commission of the selling price. Be very cautious and if you want to buy a home for sale by owner, I suggest hiring an attorney to broker the deal. Some do this and the attorney works ONLY for you.
Actually this is not true anymore. Rules vary form state to state, but in most areas and esp. metropolitian areas, many agents will be delighted to work as a “buyer’s broker” (or however termed in your area) and represent the buyer exclusively. This involves signing an agreement with the agent that they will be your exclusive representative and represent your interests. This is actuallly a bit cleaner than the traditional method where the agent working with the buyer acts as a “sub-agent” of the seller.
The important thing to understand (conceptually) is that at the end of the day all commissions are in essence paid by the buyer’s funds even if they come from the seller proceeds at settlement, and that the buyer has significant power in dictating to the seller’s agent that the seller’s agent will split the commission if they want the deal. This is moot point in most cases as virtually all Realtors will be happy to co-broker (ie split 50/50) a commission with a buyer’s rep. agent who brings them the deal.
In dealing with FSBO’s it’s a little trickier as the entire reason the seller is FSBOing is to avoid the selling commission. In having your buyers agent contact and negotiate with a FSBO seller, just have in mind that you will be offering 2.5-3.5 % less than the max price you would pay as a set aside for paying the buyer representative agent’s commission.
A good buyer’s agent will earn their commission by advising you on the best deals, realistic negotiation parameters, and making sure that even a FSBO deal is initiated and completed cleanly and professionally, so there is little chance of litigation after the fact due to misunderstandings, even if the FSBO seller is clueless.
