Getting an offer on my house today!

Good luck! Hope it's something you can live with and will be a weight off your shoulders!

Me too, haven't lived in it in over a year and having to pay the mortgage and utilities has been a pain in the arse.

Did you mean doesn't have? Even though the house has been empty for a year, I wanted to keep the electric and water at the location to maybe help buyers/lookers understand that it's a well maintained house. Hopefully that will be a good selling point...fingers crossed!

Edited by skipg 2012-03-11 1:21 PM

Yep, second house

WELL????  was it foder for the Good News thread?

In my experience, the counter-offer by the seller is almost always accepted, so don't be afraid to counter! Unless your agent says it is a very very bad idea. It is almost comical to go through a new contract, you can practically write it yourself once you know the list price and the initial offer. They're going to come in low, you're going to counter up (or remove some of the terms) and they'll accept.*

*this advice is subject to change and should not be considered legally binding.

They tried lowballing me on the first offer, so I countered meeting them in the middle, they countered back with something else (still not what I'm thinking) so I countered one more time with my final offer take it or leave it. They have another day to accept...hope I hear something today! People want bigger and something for nothing!!!

I put my house on the market back in November also. Not a good time to sell a house so I didn't expect much until March.

I had a # in my head of what I thought but the foreclosures are dragging the value in my area way below what they should be! I'll still make a good profit on it but nothing like I want or should get if it wasn't for the crappy foreclosures! The appraiser has a big part in how much you can get and they are not all equal. Same house down the street got appraised $8000 lower than the a different appraiser from the month before and of course the bank will not lend a penny more than the house appraised for. Tough times in the housing market.

Just thankful that I'm not losing my or having to worry about the bank taking it, thought about renting my house but I'm a little scared and don't want to deal with someone trashing it. If this sale falls through, I'll give it 4 or 5 more months and rethink renting it out...we'll see

--Appraiser here, so speak in hushed tones when you* bash us please! ;-)

I just literally finished an appraisal last night where the *ONLY* comparables I had for this particular property were foreclosures. And we don't even have that high of a foreclosure rate where I live! It's because the area has recently gone through a lot of development and this builder in the area was using shady illegal business practices to get people approved for loans that they shouldn't have had in the first place. I heard of one lady who bought a house from them and they deposited $10,000 into her account "for lights and other electrical fixtures, but don't spend it until we say we're ready". Well then the loan got approved (imagine that--an extra $10,000 in your bank account makes it look like you have more money) and they took the money back out and finished constructing the property. So now we're seeing the fallout from that, a lot of these people got in over their heads, got foreclosed on, and now the market is saturated with foreclosures. Thankfully there are a couple non lender-owned properties listed for sale of that property type so when they sell it should help when doing appraisals to have a better indication of the value apart from being an REO sale.

But as a general rule, I almost never use foreclosed properties as comparable sales in the reports I write, as long as I have sufficient data from arm's length sales. It just doesn't make sense to me to use them if I don't have to, and all it does is require more adjustments, more explanation, more questions from the lender about the adequacy of that sale as a comparable in that particular report... it's not worth it.

*the corporate "you"

Edited by Bripod 2012-03-14 11:41 AM

Bripod....so sense you only had foreclosures to compare, how much did it effect the value of the home for sale? I agree that the system was effed up in the past. With the first home I bought in 98, they pretty much told the appraiser what he/she was going to put on paper and I understand that's how we got in this mess to begin with. Now it seems that it's working against the people like myself that never over extended or borrowed more than they could afford. My house should be selling for 10-20k more but based on all the foreclosures, they have to value it lower...what a mess this housing market has become!

Edited by skipg 2012-03-14 12:58 PM

Since I had the non-REO listings to include in the report, as well as another approach to value called the "Cost Approach" I was able to demonstrate the likely value in an arm's length transaction as being $1,000 higher than what they paid for it back in 2006. Like I said I just sent it off yesterday so the lender hasn't gotten back to me with any revisions (I'm guessing they're going to ask for better sales, despite extensive commentary to the lack of sale data). Since they're getting an FHA loan and all of my comps were foreclosures it's quite possible that they will not make the loan because the sale data was what it was.