My sister just bid $50k over list on a house that sold for $150k over list.

Here people price properties artificially low in order to get many offers and get buyers to pay irrational prices and waive contingencies due to fear of missing out and having to pay more for the next one. Not uncommon the past few months to see homes sell for 10-25% over list (Toronto area), prices are up about 25% so far this year.

Goose gets it. Saying "a house sold for $X above ask" is meaningless without context.

If the sale was $100K over a $150K ask, that's huge. If it's $100K over $1M, that's quite a bit, but much less surprising.

The most recent sale in my neighborhood (4/30) was $575K. Went on the market 4/15 for $510K, price changed on 4/18 to $550K. So, not a huge mark-up considering the market.

Not if it's value was $300k.

Or a dollar

even this isn't correct.

it's based on what the market value actually is for comparable houses that have sold recently.

if comparable houses in your neighborhood are selling for 500k in the last 3 months and you list for 300k, getting 200k over asking isn't huge despite it sounding like it is, it's just the correct value.

and in the same scenario, if you price your house at 500k and get 550k, i'd say that is actually huge, because you got 10% over the value of comparable houses in the neighborhood

IME also people list properties low in a hot market to get a bidding war going.

All good points.

Just noticed a house this morning with a sale sign I hadn't seen before. Get home and look it up, they're asking $475K.

The last month's sales in this neighborhood have been $575K-$665K.

Assuming it's not a total wreck and they don't accept a lowball offer, they might both get a huge over-asking price and still leave money on the table.

How do bidding wars actually work? Does the seller tell the low bids what the high bid is, wait for round 2, rinse repeat?

In most places, they just tell all the folks who have made an offer that there are multiple offers and tell everyone to have their best and last offer in by X time.

Escalator clauses.

they tell everyone every time there's a new offer (not the details of the offer) and then everyone has a chance to improve their offer based on the new number of total offers. once all offers are received, realtor usually asks everyone if its their best and final (another opportunity to improve) and then selects the best offer.

In a hot market this is the best way to get more money as buyers have fear of missing out.

submitting a BAFO for a place that is getting multiple offers just seems like a great way to torch $ if you win.

In my sister's case (Greater Toronto Area) it was all bids in by Monday 3pm and we'll pick one by Monday evening. House was listed at 500k. She bid 550k. It went for 657k.

How soon after the offer is accept can the other bidders find out what the amount was? Does the information just percolate out from the agents, or is there some legal requirement to disclose a real figure?

My sister had to wait until they'd paid the deposit, which was about 24 hours after bids closed, and then her realtor was able to look it up and tell her.

The other bidders find out once the deposit has been exchanged between the winning buyer and the seller (typically within 1 business day).

Are the offers regulated? It seems like there's a number of days to game that system on both sides

Listing agent not allowed to reveal the substance of any of the offers to other parties. Obviously things get said all the time by shady realtors but they are often reported, fined and occasionally lose their licenses (I'm a realtor). Basically listing agents are purposely vague and just tell you that you should put your best foot forward and make sure you have no regrets etc. Lots of people recordings conversations these days.

All offers must be kept on record after the fact and buyers who won can confirm that they were real offers (though not their content).

Most problems arise when the listing agent also represents a buyer in a bidding war. For that reason a lot of agents refuse to do that these days.

Having a bit of a dilemma these days.

I live in the Middle East and plan to stay until retirement, which is ~20 years down the line. Tired of paying rent here I decided to buy a house in an established and well known neighborhood in November last year. The prices hadn't been that low since 2010 when I bought and I felt I got a good price.

Right now we are experiencing an insane surge here. Prices for some areas/houses has gone up 40% since January. This is mostly due to this country (United Arab Emirates) being the only place on the planet that is fully open for business (no quarantine on arrival, everything is open as usual, booze is flowing etc). Plus they just starting giving out residency status and potential citizenships for investors. Of course it also helps that there is no transparency here, nobody cares where the money comes from. Right now they have an influx of Chinese, Indian and Russian buyers, but I also see more Americans than before.

When I signed the papers I paid ~993k USD. That was slightly above the median because of the location within the community. I put in roughly ~100k in renovations; did all the bathrooms, new floors, new deckings outside, polished the kitchen, smart home stuff etc. The same exact house (in a worse location) now sells for 1.3-ish, without any renovations whatsoever. The agent who handled the sale on behalf of the previous owners says I can expect to get 1.6 now.

Let's say we remove the agent bullshit tax and say I could get 1.5, that would be a rough net profit of 220-250k (I had to cover all the sales costs when buying which is the norm here). I think a lot of people would take the money and run, but I spent a lot of time on the renovations, it was extremely frustrating at times and the number one issue I have is that I sell and buy in the same market. I would have to go back to renting again, or go for something run down and rebuild again which I dread right now as I just finished this one.

Would you sell if you're in my shoes?

Thanks for reading!

Ps; Here the buyer carries most of the cost of the sale/purchase. I will have pay around a small fee for the marketing, the agent fees and government fees are the buyer's responsibility. Also there are no taxes here since that is haram, so I will pocket the rest of the profit outright.

How essential is this part? If everyone is just doing their own research over the internet, why not try to cut out the buyer's agent too. I'm sure there is a good reason, but what is it exactly?

If you like the house and you're going to be there for 20yrs, I don't know what you accomplish by selling. Any profit you make will be gone when you buy the next place or rent.

This.



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List for 1.95, and don't take less than 1.8. Doing so makes all decisions easy.

Your post is pretty much akin to asking us if we think the market will fall. Nobody knows. Certainly if interest rates rise the market will nosedive but that would be contrary Federal Reserve guidance. You said it yourself that you bought at a low. That should mitigate some of the downside risk and frankly your profits don't sound all that great if you truly did buy at a low, which tells me there is likely more upside potential.

One would need to understand the rental market to really make a determination though. If rent prices are low and not expected to rise much then perhaps a case could be made for cashing out. This would especially be the case if property taxes, hoa fees, and assessments are high (if your monthly fees are not much less than renting then certainly it makes sense to rent).

I'm no expert on UAE but my understanding is that aside from an uptick in cases in recent months, UAE has done a fantastic job of handling covid-19 relative to other countries. If a country/state/municipality has shown competency in implementing common sense solutions that are business friendly then that's exactly the type of place that I'd want to invest my money long term.