Wish Luck!! We Put an Offer on a House! (Updated, Fell Through)

[Total Refected Power]

dAfter about 8 months of looking we found a nice house and put an offer in yesterday. They already countered and now we re-countered this morning.

Hope all the nonsense will be over soon!!!!

EDIT:

Fell through. Won't budge off his ask. No rush to sell. He is over priced and everyone knows it but is trying to get every last dime.

So we walked. The house needs updating and his ask plus the budget to update would be too much for the neighborhood. Might as well buy a newer home in the same town for that money with no headaches.

The "other bidder" was BS too. If they existed he wouldn't have come back to us, especially since they were offering more.

What a BS process.

 

[Isla]

/me does a successful house buying dance for TRP

Just remember to keep breathing. Buying and selling houses is sooooo stressful! Don't let the stress get to you.

 

[ArkAoss]

also, be warry you arn't blinded by a feaure of the house. When my folks got thier present house, it had been repainted white all thru, and though it wasa anice job, beneath it was 3layers of wallpaper. The kitchen has spectacular cherry cabinets, but the fridge nook, was formed just for that fridge, and the floor was cheap linoleum tiles, 3 layers thick, then 1 layer of 5/8ths ply wood, then tounge and groove. We had to rip up the ply wood to redo the floor, and don't let me get started about working the wiring in a 50 yr old house..

 

[kranky]

Best of luck, TRP! Remember at the closing to tell the agents you want to read every word of every document before you sign, and watch their hair stand on end.

 

[Ornery]

ArkAoss, there are only three things that matter in real estate:

• Location
• Location
• Location

You can fix everything else. If you've found the house you want, I wouldn't screw around with counter offers. If you lose it, you'll kick yourself forever. If you pay a little too much, so what. How far apart are you? Enough to take the risk of losing it?

Edit: I also hope car payments haven't prevented you from getting a better house. Personally, I don't think people have to make car payments. Sure, you have to drive a bomb instead, but you can double the house you can afford by applying those transportation dollars to a mortgage payment instead. Fair trade off in my book!

 

[Balt]

Ornery, I thought that applied more to business locations than houses. Sure, you want a good location for your house, but you don't want a shack on nice property either.

TRP, maybe you'd have better luck if you were absorbing power instead of reflecting it!

Good luck!

 

[desy]

Yep Ornery thats what I did.
I just built a brand new house and showed the wife what an extra 20 G does to the mortgage and it really isn't all that much.
It just made more sense to start from scratch on a house than to reno the current one and get a lot closer to our ideal.

 

[Total Refected Power]

Ornery:

We are about 3.5% apart. What we are fighting is the massive appreciation this giuy is trying to get. A bigger house two doors down went for a lot less six months ago.

Our initial offer was 7.5% lower than his list price and he still was interested because of our very solid financing situation. He dropped 10K and we upped 15K as a final firm offer.

We are trying to be tough but fair! So far its working.

ArkAoss: Ornery is right. The location (neighborhood is the most important). The house is 10 years old so it is a modern floorplan but it still needs updating.

Paint, inside and out. Refinish hardwood floors and replace some ugly carper in a few rooms. Second order is new kitchen countertops (formica isn't exciting) and maybe a master bath update.

 

[Ornery]

"...you don't want a shack on nice property either."

The hell I don't! Damn, that's exactly what I want! You'll notice that the prime spots in any established city were taken decades earlier. You've got no choice, but to grab an older piece of property in that case. It's nice to be one of the first ones in when there is a new exit added to a freeway that passes through a city, but how often does that happen?

That was my first choice when looking for a spot. Near a major freeway exchange, near schools, near shopping, near work etc. Tall order? Yep. Gotta stick to your guns or you won't get it, though. We scored, but the house needed work. Big deal. Ya do the work. It's basically never ending anyway!

Good luck TRP. Hope it all works out. Personally, I enjoyed house hunting and closing the deal etc. Pretty exciting actually. We purchased when the interest rates were close to 17%, so it was a buyer's market. Didn't have a house to unload, so we called all the shots. Truly fun!

 

[nickdakick]

Hopefully you made a better choice than these people. Search the site for "Weird Extras".

 

[Total Refected Power]

Nickadick:

The house is located along a route where trucks deliver goods to a supermarket 24 hours a day. She says the noise was unbearable. The stove, the freezer, the microwave, the washing machine, and the sauna didn't work, they said

No worries about traffic. Quiet street and town. The HOME INSPECTION and walkthrough should have picked up the broken appliances or any other defects.

Still, you never know a house until you lived there.

 

[Double Trouble]

Congrats bud, hope you get it with your latest offer! Buying a home is one of those things that just seems to drain you. Maybe it's the fact that you're about to spend a whole lotta money on something and you want to dot the I's. Good luck!

 

[Total Refected Power]

TAGEJ:

It is draining. Today I almost don't care. We should here something today. Its all a game at this point. Everyone trying to get the best deal. Never quite sure who's telling the truth about other interested buyers etc.

It is stressful!

Thanks for the good wishes.

 

[Total Refected Power]

Looks like its dead. He's in no hurry to sell and won't budge off his meager counteroffer. The house is in need of updating and that would send it over the cliff in that neighborhood. Might as well buy another house in better shape at this point! The only way it made sense was if he accepted our reasonible offer of 5% below an inflated asking price.

Moving on.

 

[ArkAoss]

keep your head up trp, I hear the housing market is supposed to be good right now. but for me the job market isn't.. need job, better job.

 

[Ornery]

Do you have a house to sell? Are you dealing with an agent?

When I was looking, I pulled out a map of our area and circled the ideal spots. I just kept my search to those areas. I only talked to agents that had their name on the signs in front of the houses. No sense dragging a third party agent into the mix.

We just drove through the areas we had picked out and looked for ourselves. If we did talk to any agent about our hunt, and they offered to find us something, we gave them the areas to search and told them to not bother bringing up a home in an area other than those. Why waste our time?

Hang in there, probably just a matter of time...

Edit: Oops, I forgot, what city(s)are you looking for?

 

[BDawg]

House buying is a sham. You have a real estate agent who (at least in NC) isn't allowed to offer any real buying advice.

The only good side for us is they're building a Catholic school a block away from our house. That should give a nice bump to our property value.

We were lucky, we bought a FSBO. The owners were asking much less / sq foot than any other house around. And it had one of the best yards in the neighborhood.

 

[satori]

Speaking of property vs. house, I remember reading in the paper (Mercury in SJ) that someone was trying to >donate< his house. He'd bought the house for the property and wanted to build a nice place, so he was trying to donate the existing house to some charity for a write-off. Of course, this was a year or so back when things were hot, so maybe things have changed.

 

[Cheapster]

Nickadick Now that was too funny. I think I saw a few episodes of them working on that house. My question is, if it's 24 hour delivery to that store, why didn't they hear it on their 2 hour tour? Hmmm..can't they take the loss off of their taxes?

 

[Total Refected Power]

Ornery:

We have been working with an agent but have also looked on our own. We are the perfect buyers. Currently, renters with perfect credit, pre-approved for mortage and plenty of cash to put down.

We have locked in on an area as well. We are looking in the suburbs west of Boston. Sudbury, Natick, etc. .

There's a house out there its just a PITA.

 

[Optimus]

TRP -don't worry about it and take your time. When the wife and I were buying we had a nice house we wanted refuse to budge that last 1 grand to meet us at something we could afford. We walked - they called a week later asking us to reoffer what we had... to late! We had found a wonderful house that is better in every way, including price (brand new too!).

Also, NEVER trust the agent to check for things! We walked away from one house because a quick chat with the neighbors (who were also selling) let us in on the fact that all the houses on that side of the street had basement flooding problems.

Another house seemed absolutely perfect - huge, fairly new, great house at the end of a quiet cul-du-sac (sp?). This house was perfect... even the view of an empty field across the road was nice. Hmmm what is that empty field anyway?

Turns out that field was the future site of a highway bypass!!!! trucks and semis and traffic not 10 feet from the front door in 2 years!

Walked away.

Hang in there and never feel pressured - wait until everything seems right! Good luck!

 

[Total Refected Power]

Thanks, Optimus!!