Just tell each seller what you think the price of their house should be, and offer them that much. If they don't accept, call them a mean-faced doody head.

That's really what I think about how you're approaching the housing market

Do you look at the pictures first? 42 houses, that's exhausting.

How many beds, how many baths, how many garage spaces? In terms of the neighborhoods, are they in areas liable to decline, stay the same, or get better?

It was over a longer period of time, but I'd guesstimate I saw double that in person and many times more than that through photos.

Why do you think one of them will eventually accept?

It all depends on the current market in your area. It might work. It also might be a situation where if you don't offer more than list you have no hope.

Wow, We only looked at a couple of houses. Within the school district we wanted back in 2004, the market was super hot, we only looked at 3-4 houses.

Live and learn, I think everyone would turn back the clock if they could.

I know my friend would have been similar to you. He and his wife were looking in an "in demand" area and if they didn't get outbid (over asking), they would have bought a house after only looking at a handful. They eventually made a well over asking offer on their house after seeing it once and it only being on the market a few days.

I looked at dozens of houses over the course of a year. I looked over hundreds of listings. But, I wasn't in a hurry to buy and my search spanned two counties and probably 30 miles. I had a couple of high priority areas, but wasn't really tied to anything, so I took my time.

Thanks everyone for all the great responses.
This seems kinda silly to me. I want to try to get a good deal on the house I buy. Why would I offer what I think the house is worth if I think one or more of the buyers are willing to sell for under what I think its worth?

Yeah, I look at pictures prior to visiting all of the houses I went to and a lot of them I even drove by the day (or a couple days) before visiting to see if I liked the area/ curb appeal.

do you have any reason to think that?

at a high level, in a buyers market, sure if you put out a hundred offers you are eventually going to find someone who is eager to sell. even then you need to consider the value of your time - do you really want to go through the motions a hundred times before you find this person - and how much is this costing you in terms of time (ie would you be better off making money somehow in a 2nd job)? More importantly what if this persons house isn't exactly what you want?

in a sellers market your SOL b/c the market essentially determines price. If I was selling today I'd put my house on for $100k less than what I think it's worth and I know I would get 15 offers to pick and choose from - and that would tell me what it's actually worth

1: 4 bdrm, 3.5 baths 4000 sqft

2: 4 bdrm, 2.5 baths 4500 sqft

3: 4 bdrm, 3.5 baths 4500 sqft

All 3 have 2 car attached garages. House 3 is in a really nice neighborhood while the other two are just in good neighborhoods (they are about equal). Assume all three houses are expected to grow in value equally over the next 100 years.

My plan is to offer them all $x below asking then if none of them accept increase each offer (one at a time). If all 3 keep rejecting my offers I will eventually offer asking price then over asking price. One of the houses has been listed for a month and I've talked to the owner and am very confident he hasn't had any offers that were asking or more.

With all the talk on how much o/u to offer, might as well put homes on the market with no price at all.

A lot were lookie lou open house situations as we wanted a house a lot longer than we had the ability to buy a house.

Yeah, like I said one of the sellers told me he is flexible on price (although since then he lowered the price 20k).

I have already wasted so much time looking at 42 houses, driving around looking at those + more, and looking at hundreds online that wasting another 3 hours making 3-10 bids on 3 different houses doesn't seem that significant.

(in a so called sellers market) I understand the idea of listing your house under mkt value, but I don't see why people think its more effective than listing 5% above mkt and hoping you get a bite or two.

What do you mean?

This sounds like the perfect plan to piss off the sellers.

Seller has home for 100k, offers come in ranging from 120k-80k. I guess I'm talking where homes are in "HOT" area's.

Some of these stories are just insane to me, offering more then the asking price is mind boggling to me.

Don't think of the asking price as a sticker price you'd see in a store with a supply that matches demand. It's like the starting bid on an auction. When you put an offer in on a house in a hot market, you're bidding in an auction, and there's no PayPal Buy Now button.

Nobody expects to get the Van Gogh that starts bidding at $10 million for $10 million. If you want that painting you have to be willing to pay $100 million. If you don't care if you get the Van Gogh or the print at the local copy shop, then don't spend $100 million. But if you want that painting or one of similar quality, and you think you deserve to get it for $10 million and not a penny more, you're never going to get your Van Gogh.

That's basically what's happening.
Because, assuming a hot market, if you list it 5% above market value you might get someone willing to pay that, or someone to counter at 2.5% above market value, but if you list it below that and people know they need to bid higher to get the house, the final bid will be higher.
http://business.financialpost.com/pe...s-mean-nothing

It would be great if someone could start a Buying and Selling a House thread and this one could go back to homeowners talking about renos and improvements and questions/discussions about owning a house.

Me too. I wish someone could explain to me why this is due to "hot" areas and not ignorant realtors. Do the sellers' agents not realize the areas are "hot" when they put a price on the house when listing it? Obviously, they should, so should the houses not be priced accordingly?

Craig Alexander, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion, says the type of “auction” organized by the real estate industry is likely to produce a higher price.

“You generally get a higher price from a closed bidding process. The reason is in an open bidding concept, let’s say I am bidding against you and I’m prepared to go to $500,000. We start the process at, say, $380,000 and the most you will go to is $450,000, then I can get it for $451,000,” says Mr. Alexander, who says you cannot discount people getting emotional in any bidding process.

In the type of seller’s market we have today, the process is downright inflationary. The artificially low selling price just kicks the process off.

Moshe Milevsky, an associate professor in Finance at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, says the closest analogy he can think of is the market for initial public offerings.

“The investment bank tries to issue to the market at a low price,” Prof. Milevsky says. “They know the company is worth more but they go to market with a low price because they want that pop on the first day of trading. They want the publicity, the excitement.

“In cases of real estate, it’s not different,” he says. “What you offer it as not as important as what the market price is. You offer at a low number to create a bidding war.”

That’s not to say home prices are not rising fast. They are. And you can’t discount the possibility of that one buyer who bids well above market price. But asking price itself should not be your gauge for what a home is worth. Not anymore. Real estate agents have taken care of that.

It's got to be impossible for your agent not to hate you after house #26 I'd think.

Do you have the resources to pay for such a large house? I mean in terms of mortgage and upkeep as well as the time to perform the upkeep.

That would be funny after 42 homes he tells his realtor, he's broke.

I spent the last two weekends digging up rocks. The previous owner of my house really let the yard and "landscaping" go. So much overgrown trees, shrubbery and grass; just complete laziness.

One of the areas I've been working on was a very bizarre looking section of the backyard about 10ft long by 4ft wide of thick weeds, grass, and three super thorny bushes about 5ft tall. I've been ignoring it myself for a while, knowing it was going to take some work to really get into. As I mowed around it routinely I could see several rocks hidden beneath the grass and weeds. In the middle of the area was a decent size pile of very rotted wood cut like firewood, but not worth burning anymore. All in all it looked a bit like a burial of sorts. So part of me was curious if I'd dig up a family pet or possibly even grandma.

I finally got into it over the past two weekends and in total I dug up over 500 rocks. Anything from a very large white rocks with holes runing all through them that I could barely move on my own to smaller sizes a tad bigger than a softball, and also a total of 378 smooth small black stones a bit bigger than a golf ball in most cases.

The dirt beneath the rotted wood was extremely soft and fertile looking and as I moved the wood numerous flying cockroaches scurried about. Thankfully I had good gloves. Once I got most of the rocks out I was able to cut back more of the grass until I was left with the three thorny bushes. No clue what they were but the thorns were about 1-2" long spikes that were just brutal if you caught one even with the gloves on. I cut them down with my lopper and dug them up and finally as I got everything out I discovered a tree stump, partially burned, but still strong enough to withstand anything I would consider throwing at it for now.

I want to use the large rocks as border for flower beds around a couple of trees and some other landscaping features I have planned. Just going to take alot of work moving them and placing them properly.

Really not sure what to do with the black stones. They're definitely cool looking and useful. Just not sure how yet.

Anyone have any good suggestions I'm open.

Thank you!

That does make some sort of sense. In a conspiratorial kind of way.

Not asking if he is broke. Asking if he can really afford such a large house in terms of initial monetary cost and continuing cost monetarily and timewise.

Great idea. Know any Greens?