I would sign tomorrow @ 117k

MY realtor who is also a family friend. Top salesperson in the County for the last 3 years. President of the realtors association for the county. Just to give you her credentials.

She just threw that number out there because there is another house on the next street over that is comparable to mine, new siding, new windows, etc. I think mine is a tad bigger, but he has a better layout inside. Mine looks way more curb appeal IMO. She's listing his house for 129k in the next few weeks. I just want rid of the damn thing. I love the house, but I think only i love it is because I put so much of my "sweat equity" into it, also stitches in my head, etc. cuts, bruises, sore back, etc.......

My new home, which is being finalized by the arcitiect, is 1000x better then this house. going to cost around 235k to build, plus the property of 12 ac. i just purchased. I will be a new home w/ 3 car attached garage, and a nice big open floor plan, roughly the same amount of sq. feet, but on 1 floor and a huge 18'x9' kitchen w/ island. in the middle of the damn woods, with tons of wildlife. I'm going to move into my grandmothers house til the new home is done. She lives alone, and only lives there 5 months out of the year.

Why not just trust your realtor? They've got credentials and experience that you do not.

I'd look for an installer with more than 20 yards of experience IMO. Doesn't seem like a lot.

autocorrect fail

As long as you are using a hardwood pneumatic nailer, it's easy. I did this for the first time last fall and had no problems. Make sure the first boards you put down are Square and check square the first few rows very carefully and the rest will go down easy.

She currently has over 50 listings of her own. I'm sure I'll get the attention needed.

Is that snarky sarcasm? The realtor wants to make money just as badly as you want to sell the dump.

This is true. Not so much of a dump though.

This process sucks. We just missed on our second house after putting in an offer above asking price the day it went on the market with a large down payment.

We have asked to view houses the morning after they went on the market only to be told they were only accepting offers up to 8 pm the day it went on the market.

CMA is mostly an afterthought. Listing agents cherry pick houses to justify an inflated asking price, then people like me are so desperate, they just offer listing + X%.

That's crazy, Next time just offer straight cash $$$$

what area?

DFW

I am glad we have the agent we have as she isn't interested in the dollar first. She's interested in making sure we get the right house.

There is a chapter or section is Freakonomics that discusses how on average, realtors homes stay on the market for longer and sell for more then their respective listings for other people. Basically because a realtors cut of an extra 10-20k isn't going to be worth a whole lot of hassle to them, their main financial incentive is to sell the property as fast as possible. This doesn't mean that there aren't great realtors who will really look out for you, but you should always be looking out for yourself when buying or selling what is presumably most people's biggest asset. The same way you don't need to micromanage your financial advisor if you have one, but you better be sure he's getting you into mutual funds with a 1.25% management fee.

Yes, I remember this Freakonomics and was going to post something similar.

It would be a great point as to why he should just listen to his realtor in this case. He is desperate to sell the house and doesn't care how much value he is losing. Thus, the realtor is acting in his best interest because they typically want to sell and move on to the next one.

Unless contractually obligated to do otherwise, continuing to show the property is okay in most cases and I wouldn't turn away a well-qualified person who is seriously interested. What you do is communicate that the property is currently under contract to all inquiring agents and make it to an appointment-only thing, which weeds out all but the very seriously interested. It also gives you a list of agents you can call back if things fall through.

Get a contract, get through the attorney review period, get through the inspection period, get an agreement for correcting inspection issues, and get the lender commitment in hand first.

The reason why you do this is because many home sales fall through. Banks who preapprove clients can pull funding - at crunch time they may not like your tax or income paperwork, they may not like your condo's financial situation, they may not like the appraisal, someone could lose their job and so on. In that cast you'd be upset but the seller could have lost 6 weeks and have nothing to show for it.

And, as you might be an example of, buyers will walk away when inspection issues can't be addressed.

This part's key: Your contract & earnest deposit buys you protection from competing offers and not a lot more. It's not the firm commitment you think it is at that stage, at least not in practice. This is partially evidenced by the fact that you can walk for any substantial inspection issue (which almost every home will have). You also have an out with the financing contingency you almost certainly have.

Meet with realtor, She showed me comps around the area. Listed it for way below 119k, more like 110k. That's pretty far off from the 129k we talked about on the phone 2 months ago. She was just guessing early on. Needless to say, fixing up a home, in certain area's, don't bring much to value of your property. I guess it's just a bad neighborhood.

Unless something life changing happens, our next home, will be new and we will live there for 25+ years or so. Hopefully sell to our son, and build a little house on the rest of our property.

Believe what you want. Her actions have shown the truth of the matter. An example is she is mindful of our budget, and comfort zone, when showing us a house.

This smells of what they call buying a listing, very common. Agent meets potential client and gives them a high ballpark figure. Who do you think the people are going to choose, the straight-shooter who gave it to them straight and said list at ~$180k, or the one who said $210k? People tend to have an inflated opinion of their own home's value which compounds that problem.

When picking out an agent to sell, one of the first things to do is communicate to them that you're looking for honest pricing advice and that you can handle it objectively (good or bad). If an agent immediately understands that you're not the typical life fish who thinks that their house is the greatest thing ever, and that you understand that value is determined by the market and not [insert irrelevant nonsense flaky sellers have talked themselves into], then it's easier for the agent to give it to you straight and get the thing priced correctly from the start.

When they coddle people and tell them what they want to hear, then the seller hit the market too high, it sits longer and they wind up doing a couple price cuts anyway. Then the agent acts surprised or tells you about how yeah it's been slower lately while knowing you listed too high.

I think we talked before. IIRC you were well-qualified with a lot of money down. Combined with above-asking price offers you're always at least reasonable. If your agent thinks those offers were enough to be competitive, they probably were. It's kind of like the eBay mentality in sellers' markets sometimes. Just because you lost out doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, it just happens and you don't know how sensible your competition is in any particular sale. Loads of investors are buying with cash right now too which is obviously very attractive to sellers.

Just keep your head and keep looking, you'll get a place without having to do anything stupid. And with any luck the market will stay hot for a little while after you buy it.

The thing is my agent and the seller's agent work in different offices of the same company. When they get a signed contract, they are supposed to at least change the listing to show for backup. I found out yesterday it actually was changed to that status shortly before we informed the other side we were cancelling. When asked why the change took so long, their agent blamed others in her office.

As far as money goes, it is 100% locked in and we gave the seller's agent proof, but we did have an appraisal contingency. The inspection was so bad though that we didn't do the appraisal.

Had we bought the house, we were doing a quick close so the seller wasn't going to wait six weeks for nothing.

We found another house one owned by the same person all this time and I am meeting with our agent today to do an offer. If accepted, we hope to do the inspection Wednesday with the close on the 27th

We made an offer which wasn't accepted but it was countered. We didn't like the amount, but did accept the longer closing so we countered on the amount. The seller still didn't accept the amount we offered this time, but came down on her ask some more. We then accepted.

Seller should sign the contract tomorrow and inspection should be Wednesday.

Congrats!!

I'm renting a house that's about a hundred years old and I hate it.

I wouldn't kill to be in a thirty-five year old house but I might maim.