The Song Fight Bulletin Board

so, uh, where did Tuesday go?

Anyway, my wife and I are currently house-hunting. Soon will be gone those (not so) halcyon days of apartment living! We're excited, though our initial euphoria has been tempered by our first offer. We found this GREAT place: big enough of for our library, a guest bedroom and another addition to the family. Has this fantastic sitting porch, a nice quiet (and established) neighborhood, walking distance to work... Yeah, it had everything.

... but the sellers wouldn't play ball. It was listed at 183,500, which is WAY overpriced for the area in this market (a similar, but not as cool property just down the street just sold for 169,000). The kicker was, when we made the offer, the sellers didn't even budge on their price. It was like talking to a wall. Very disappointing.

We're now on our third round of house-hunting (the great place was found on round 2). And we've found two likely candidates that, weirdly, couldn't be more different. The first is 2055 square feet, 4 BR, 2.5 bath, a gazebo and a nice open plan on the first floor. The other is just over 1500 sq. ft., only 3 BR, 2 bath, but it has a den for our library (hey, we're bibliophiles...). The seller is actually a colleague of mine here at KSU. Both properties are about equidistant to work (we car pool because her office is practially across the street from the university; we like living close - saves money and stress).

Wwe're going to see them both once more this evening with our real estate agent and I imagine we'll make a decision and then an offer. So, yeah! and cross your fingers for us.

Question of the Day (finally): What was your house-hunting experience like? And/or: what are your criteria for a great home?

I bought my place in 2002, just before the prices all went crazy, so that was perfect timing. My wife M and I were not engaged yet at the time, but we had a pretty good idea then that we would eventually so she helped me to look at houses. It was really nice not to be the only person looking. At the beginning I asked my realtor (a friend of mine from volleyball) how many houses he thought we would look at before I decided on one. He said "20." Guess what, when I counted later, the house I bought was the 20th one I looked at. Cool! It was fun. I only ever put in the one offer (counter, then accepted w/ rentback).
-bill

QotD: I've never lived on my own but the perfect home is somewhere in a low crime area that is in the middle of town (meaning, I walk so I need to be able to get places on my feet). It has to be in a good position for internet access. Other than that, I couldn't care less.

nyjm wrote:so, uh, where did Tuesday go?

Anyway, my wife and I are currently house-hunting. Soon will be gone those (not so) halcyon days of apartment living! We're excited, though our initial euphoria has been tempered by our first offer. We found this GREAT place: big enough of for our library, a guest bedroom and another addition to the family. Has this fantastic sitting porch, a nice quiet (and established) neighborhood, walking distance to work... Yeah, it had everything.

... but the sellers wouldn't play ball. It was listed at 183,500, which is WAY overpriced for the area in this market (a similar, but not as cool property just down the street just sold for 169,000). The kicker was, when we made the offer, the sellers didn't even budge on their price. It was like talking to a wall. Very disappointing.

We're now on our third round of house-hunting (the great place was found on round 2). And we've found two likely candidates that, weirdly, couldn't be more different. The first is 2055 square feet, 4 BR, 2.5 bath, a gazebo and a nice open plan on the first floor. The other is just over 1500 sq. ft., only 3 BR, 2 bath, but it has a den for our library (hey, we're bibliophiles...). The seller is actually a colleague of mine here at KSU. Both properties are about equidistant to work (we car pool because her office is practially across the street from the university; we like living close - saves money and stress).

Wwe're going to see them both once more this evening with our real estate agent and I imagine we'll make a decision and then an offer. So, yeah! and cross your fingers for us.

Question of the Day (finally): What was your house-hunting experience like? And/or: what are your criteria for a great home?

I love house hunting. Which is why I own too many houses.

To dig up an old, but true, cliche - there are 3 important criteria. Location location location. Everything else can be fixed. Location can't.

nyjm wrote:so, uh, where did Tuesday go?

I was thinking of creating a thread for yesterday, but I'd started the last three threads. Plus, I couldn't think of a decent QotD.

QotD: Not really looking for a house, though the wife and I are considering buying the condo we currently rent. Not sure if we'll be able to come up with the down payment by then, but it would be nice, because we like it where we are right now, and if we can't buy the place, we'll have to move again in ten months.

How long had that first house been on the market? If they just recently put it up for sale, that could explain their reluctance to budge on the price-- they've still got time to wait for some sucker to come along and offer them their asking price.

If it's still on the market in a few months, watch that price plummet.

So far I'm 3 for 3 on this pattern:

1. Contact a broker and look at a few properties
2. Come really close to buying something (due to pressure from the broker)
3. Get cold feet due to some questionable aspect which was lurking in the shadows
4. Some time later, talk to a different broker and almost immediately find something way better than anything the broker in #1 found and buy it

So far this hasn't repeated itself a third time, but:

5. 1-2 years later, major life change forces me to sell it unexpectedly; fortunately due to ridiculously good timing I end up coming out ahead anyway

jb wrote:How long had that first house been on the market? If they just recently put it up for sale, that could explain their reluctance to budge on the price-- they've still got time to wait for some sucker to come along and offer them their asking price.

If it's still on the market in a few months, watch that price plummet.

Not necesasarily. It must be remembered that there is no "right" price for any house. It comes down to what you are prepared to pay and what the vendor is prepared to take. That is the only "right" price.

12 months ago I put a house on the market, at what it soon became obvious was too high a price for the market at the time. The ensuing global finacial stuff and plummeting interest rates however suddenly turned that house into an income stream, as its rental value increased and my mortgage payments decreased. So anyone waiting for me to drop the price of that house to what they thought was a more 'realistic' price - will still be waiting. It is still for sale, and still listed at exactly the price it statred at. It isn't plummeting anywhere. I can wait, and while I wait I am making money.

It is a losers game trying to second guess another parties motives. You can only decide what you think something is worth to you. And if that matches what the vendor thinks - you do business. If not, you move on.

jb wrote:How long had that first house been on the market? If they just recently put it up for sale, that could explain their reluctance to budge on the price-- they've still got time to wait for some sucker to come along and offer them their asking price.

If it's still on the market in a few months, watch that price plummet.

In a normal market, that's great advice.

Noah, was that house already occupied? It sounds like the kind of neighborhood with a lot of dropping values, and if the current homeowners have a mortgage they're trying to get out of, it may have been that they couldn't budge because their mortgage servicer wouldn't budge on the short sale price. I see it at my workplace all the time.

One of the contributors to the skyrocketing foreclosure rate is that there's just so many markets where borrowers can't sell their homes, even for legitimate reasons.

On the other hand, interest rates and property values are both really low, so in that regard, it's a good time to be house-shopping.

fluffy wrote:So far I'm 3 for 3 on this pattern:

1. Contact a broker and look at a few properties
2. Come really close to buying something (due to pressure from the broker)
3. Get cold feet due to some questionable aspect which was lurking in the shadows
4. Some time later, talk to a different broker and almost immediately find something way better than anything the broker in #1 found and buy it

So far this hasn't repeated itself a third time, but:

I have bought 4 houses. Every time, we have known which house we will buy virtually the instant we see it, and have never regretted any of those purchases. Our last purchase in NZ, we had only looked at one other house before making our decision.

Our only regret was one house in Brisbane where we a bit too low and too slow with our first offer, so we missed out. Found another house just as good a week later that we eventually bought - but I have always believed in trusting ones instincts and acting decisively.

fluffy wrote: 5. 1-2 years later, major life change forces me to sell it unexpectedly; fortunately due to ridiculously good timing I end up coming out ahead anyway

Me too - but recent circumstances explained earlier meant that i missed out on the "selling" bit and we have been accumulating excess houses. We will soon have 2 on the market - as a move back across the Tasman is now looking imminent.

And it isn't anything to do with "fortunate good timing". Just do what you have to do and things usually work out. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" timing. If you worry about that stuff you are destined for disappointment.

...hmmm I'm starting to sound like some sort of investment guru....that's a worry...

Caravan Ray wrote:

fluffy wrote:So far I'm 3 for 3 on this pattern:

1. Contact a broker and look at a few properties
2. Come really close to buying something (due to pressure from the broker)
3. Get cold feet due to some questionable aspect which was lurking in the shadows
4. Some time later, talk to a different broker and almost immediately find something way better than anything the broker in #1 found and buy it

So far this hasn't repeated itself a third time, but:

I have bought 4 houses. Every time, we have known which house we will buy virtually the instant we see it, and have never regretted any of those purchases. Our last purchase in NZ, we had only looked at one other house before making our decision.

Yeah, I think it's more to do with getting a better realtor the second time around. The pattern is always that the first realtor tries to dictate what I should want to get (usually for "maximum resale value"), and the second one actually listens to what I want.

And it isn't anything to do with "fortunate good timing". Just do what you have to do and things usually work out. There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" timing. If you worry about that stuff you are destined for disappointment.

Well, I didn't mean that I had planned anything, just that things happened to work out in my favor due to completely unpredictable aspects. I didn't want to call it "luck" because that has connotations which are incompatible with my rationalist world view (that is to say that events can be lucky but a person is not inherently lucky).

For example, when I sold the house I owned in grad school (because I couldn't find a job after graduating and had to move back in with my parents - not a "lucky" turn of events), the buyers were an older couple from California who were retiring and didn't realize that in New Mexico the market price is generally much higher than the actual sale price, and immediately offered full asking price, and I came out significantly ahead.

In the case of my condo in Seattle (which I sold because I got the job in California), the real estate bubble was starting to hit the higher-end properties in the city, which had the odd secondary effect of raising the value of the middle-tier housing, which my place happened to be at the higher end of, at a time when a lot of potential buyers happened to realize that they had no business buying a studio loft for $350K or whatever. (This didn't have anything to do with the person who actually bought my place, but it certainly influenced the market favorably for me.) I didn't come that far ahead but it still worked out about the same as renting, even though I hadn't even owned it for a year.

fluffy wrote: Well, I didn't mean that I had planned anything, just that things happened to work out in my favor due to completely unpredictable aspects. I didn't want to call it "luck" because that has connotations which are incompatible with my rationalist world view (that is to say that events can be lucky but a person is not inherently lucky).

My world view is less rationalist and does include luck or karma or whatever. The point is though, the existence of luck is dependent on whether or not the observer can actually see it. Nothing pisses me off more than hearing people bitch and moan with "...ooohhh it's a bad time to buy/sell/whatever..." - garbage - if you need a house and you can afford it, buy the bastard. If not, don't. When I bought my house last October, as banks were collapsing around our ears, I had one dude at work warning me very seriously "...it's a baaad time now, I want to buy, but I'm going to wait...blah, blah, blah..." - anyway, 8 months later, he's now unemployed and still renting somewhere - and I've just had a holiday at Disneyland. Who's the idiot?

I get very sick of all of these economists and financial type people trying to pretend that there is something "scientific" about economics. There is nothing scientific about boring little men, some of whom may be dishonest, buying and selling things. Bloody idiots pouring over their financial papers stressing over whether their pork bellies or whatever are up...they piss me right off...these dickheads every night on the news with their financial reports looking all serious in their stupid bloody pin-stripe suits, pretending they they know their frikking arses from their elbows, living in bloody fantasyland the lot of 'em....

errrrr, what was I talking about again?

fluffy wrote: For example, when I sold the house I owned in grad school (because I couldn't find a job after graduating and had to move back in with my parents - not a "lucky" turn of events), the buyers were an older couple from California who were retiring and didn't realize that in New Mexico the market price is generally much higher than the actual sale price, and immediately offered full asking price, and I came out significantly ahead.

An excellent example to what I alluded to in an earlier post.

JB's assessment of the overpriced house earlier was of course perfectly reasonable and very likely correct - but at the end of the day, when dealing with other human beings - who knows what is going on at the backs of their tiny minds? For all you know, the apparently perfectly rational vendor you are dealing with may actually be receiving orders from a transmitter inserted in their anus by a passing Trafalmadorian spaceship.

jb wrote:How long had that first house been on the market? If they just recently put it up for sale, that could explain their reluctance to budge on the price-- they've still got time to wait for some sucker to come along and offer them their asking price.

If it's still on the market in a few months, watch that price plummet.

It's been on the market for nearly a year now. Best we can figure, the folks have money and can afford to let it sit 'til they get the price they want. It's not occupied, but kept up: the lawn is mowed, the place is dusted. It's got to be a cash hole for them.

More money than brains.

more back story: the first house I talked about, the one they wouldn't negotiate, was our "instant love" moment, especially for my wife.

update: looked at them both again this evening. Making an offer on the big house (2055 sq. ft.); they're asking 174,500; we're offering 165k and new hot water heater (it's 15 years old - and it leaks). We'll see where it goes. This property was not instant love - I think we were a bit burned to let that happen again too easily. But it was a swift like. I really dig the gazebo. Actually, I'm kind of intimidated by its space. I've always lived in small places, even my childhood homes. But it just needs to be lived in. And I'd get an English garden.

I think where you can get into a lot of trouble, in today's economy, is trying to sell one house and buy another at the same time... a couple of different friends are getting into this trouble now, and they may have to settle for "not their love at first sight" house because they will have to move out of the current place soon.
-bill

Yeah, when I sold my place in Seattle, the sale was blocked on waiting for the buyer's previous home to sell, and when I bought my place in San Francisco, the purchase was blocked waiting for the sellers' purchase to go through. It can get pretty messy.

There's nothing wrong with doing a month-to-month lease for a few months to bridge the gap, aside from the added level of chaos it introduces into your life for a while (keeping most of your stuff in storage and so on).

DRC/fdrinked: It's shaping up to be a long week, but the bourbon is helping.

QotD: My wife and I bought our house in the Summer of 2005. At the time, it was "a seller's market." I have several acquaintances who were going through the home-buying process at the same time - they all looked at dozens of houses over a period of months and were involved in bidding wars 3 or 4 times before they finally got a house for 10 or 20k above asking price.

We did our research...found the neighborhoods we were interested in (and could afford) and our first weekend out, we looked at two houses, fell in love with one of them, made an offer, and closed 4 weeks later (at the asking price).

The value of the home continued to skyrocket for 3 years, and then plummeted. Right now, it's worth about what we paid for it, which I'm willing to live with.

QotD: The value of our house decreased by 25% since we bought it in 2000, not including the cost of improvements like new windows and landscaping. If we were to sell now, it would be pretty tough for us to give somebody a break and come down on price, just cuz we'd consider our asking price to be a huge loss in the first place.

Lab results are back. We don't have swine flu. We are allowed out of our house. Hooray! Downside - now I have to go to work

Henrietta wrote:QotD: The value of our house decreased by 25% since we bought it in 2000, not including the cost of improvements like new windows and landscaping. If we were to sell now, it would be pretty tough for us to give somebody a break and come down on price, just cuz we'd consider our asking price to be a huge loss in the first place.

Wow! That really sucks.

Caravan Ray wrote:Lab results are back. We don't have swine flu. We are allowed out of our house. Hooray! Downside - now I have to go to work

How long were you quarantined?

3 days