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Who has purchased a home recently??? Share please!
We've started the hunt for a new larger home and it's not as easy as I thought it would be. This so called buyers market is STILL challenging! We've see a ton of short sales and a few foreclosures. Made one offer so far and that was turned down beause someone came and offered the asking price (we went $10,000 below). Geez! I know the idea is to be patient, but that isn't my strongest trait. So please share:
1- Did you purchase a short sale, foreclosure or traditional sale?
2- How long did the process take? (I've heard short sales can be nightmares).
3- How did your offer go as far as the asking price? Did you offer over? Right on? Ask for money towards closing? etc.
I'm trying to get an idea as to how things are working these days...
THANKS!
Mari
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Who has purchased a home recently??? Share please!
ugh no advice
just wanted to wish u gl, we're trying to short sale ours as we speak!
Good luck to you too my friend!
I'm not sure if our purchase qualifies as recent since it was almost a year ago and I know things have changed since then.
1. We went with a traditional sale. We steered clear of short sales and foreclosures because we wanted to avoid all the headaches that go along with them.
2. It took about 70 days from the day we submitted the offer to the day we closed. But, that's a traditional sale and our sellers were pretty eager and we didn't have any issues with the inspection or financing or anything. We never made an offer on a short sale because our realtor said it could take 4-6 months.
3. We offered $5000 under the asking price and asked the sellers to pay up to 6% for our closing costs. Then, when the appraisal valued the house at $5000 less than our accepted offer, we reduced the sales price but kept everything else the same (the sellers weren't happy about reducing the sales price, but didn't have much choice unless they wanted to reject our offer and wait for a cash buyer).
I think we were pretty fortunate with the whole process. Good luck!
We're going through the process right now. It's tough. We just put in a bid on a foreclosure and we are still waiting to hear back. We put in the offer a week ago Monday and were told it would take 3 - 7 business days and we're now at business day #10 and still nothing. We offered $20,000 below asking price mainly because we know that the place is going to need a new roof. It's not easy. I don't have much advice. All I can say is I feel you and we are trying to figure it out as we go along. A really desirable piece of property will usually go above asking price on a short sale or foreclosure if it is priced properly. I've heard that depending on how strong your offer matters too though - for instance if you are buying with cash, you have the strongest offer because the bank knows you are a sure thing. The more you are financing, the less desirable your offer is to the bank since you are unknown if the financing will go through. If you and someone else both make an offer, the bank will always go with the one offering more cash if all other things are equal. (that's some of the only advice we've really gotten).
Good luck!
We avoided short sales altogether but looked at some foreclosed homes. We ended up buying a house that was neither. The whole process took about a month. Our first offer was the asking price and it was declined. The owner came back with an offer 10k above the asking price and we accepted. The house was the appraised and it actually came down to 20k below the asking price so that's what we paid. I think the seller paid half of the closing costs and we rolled the other half into the loan. We got a VA guaranteed loan so we didn't need a down payment.
This was in March of last year.
BTW, short sales are the longest sales...that's what our realtor said and I have seen happen over and over again.
I still keep in contact with my realtor and he told me that houses under 500k are selling quick even though it's supposed to be a buyer's market. Anyway, we bought our house last June...
1. Our house was a foreclosure.
2. We put in the offer in mid-April and closed at the beginning of June. We were fortunate in that the bank was quick to respond to the offer.
3. We offered less than the asking price but it was pretty close to what the asking price was. We asked for money toward closing costs and they covered about half of the fees.
Good luck with your housing search!
It can be a very frustrating process to buy a new home. We actually got very lucky....
1. Short-sale
2. We put our offer in early April and closed in early May - we were extremely surprised by the amount of time it took
3. We also offered less than the asking price but close to the asking price.
I wish you the best of luck in searching for your new home!
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1. We purchased a short sale, but we got very lucky because it was a pre-approved short sale, which makes a huge difference. There had already been a contract, but it fell through because the buyer didn't qualify. The seller's lender had already approved the property to be sold as a short sale and at the price we ended up paying. To process the paperwork as quickly as possible, we offered the same exact terms (price, percentage down, percentage seller would put towards closing costs, etc.) as the previous potential buyers who had fallen through. If we had offered anything differently, we would have had to resubmit the paperwork to the bank to get approved from scratch, and that would have taken longer.
2. If you can find a pre-approved short sale, I highly recommend it. You get the benefit of a short sale price, but the process goes much more quickly. We put in our offer in early February and we are set to close either this coming week or the following. Many listings now will be advertised as "pre-approved short sales." What has held us back has been not the fact that it's a short sale, but the fact that our mortgage is an FHA loan. We didn't have enough money to put a big down payment, so the FHA loan helped a lot in that department, but it's been a hassle to get it.
3. As I explained in #1, we followed the same exact terms as the previous buyer. We ended up paying the asking price. It was appraised for one thousand dollars less than the asking price/pre-approved short sale price. So we paid $1k over market value.
Something that our realtor and our real estate attorney explained to us is that right now, homes are not typically going for too much over the market value because of the difficulty of financing. Banks are super conservative and it's a hassle to get qualified for a loan, plus they will not give you a loan for an overpriced house...they will only lend what the house is really worth. So unless you are competing with people who have cash offers, you can count on getting a pretty fair deal.
All I can tell you is to be super vigilant. The market is very competitive and nice houses fly and become unavailable almost immediately. DH was obsessive and would spend anywhere from one to two hours every single night after work looking at real estate websites, searching for new listings. That is the way we found our house, and the day we went to put our offer, several people came after us ready to put offers as well. If you find something you really like, you have to be ready to jump on it immediately.
GOOD LUCK!!!
oy where do i start with my house hunting nightmare! we are in your boat looking to buy
I had visions of HGTV house hunters in my mind - that we were going to look at a few houses and make an offer and bam be in! that it was going to be fun
Going on 5 months later - i am over it! We started looking in Dec. 2009 and thought we would have moved by now! We have found 4-5 houses that we have really liked some even loved - but due to crazy sellers, cash buyers, asking too much etc none so far have gone thru
the supply is def. tight - and some of the stuff out there is junkie
we had an offer on a regular sale but the sellers were asking too much and didnt want to come down (nothing in that neighborhood sold for what they wanted in the past year- so we walked from that deal but have some remorse bc we feel if we paid a little more we would have been moved but at the same time we didnt want to over pay)
There was 1 house that i really loved - but it had 5 offers including 1 cash that was 1k below asking - so no dice on that one - another house where the seller had it priced 45k above anything that had sold in the neighborhood - and THE perfect house but then the wife decided she didnt want to sell - even though the husband said they wanted to sell it.
Right now - we have an offer on a short sale - we made it end of Jan.
Previously we have stayed far away from SS we have heard nothing but bad stuff about them - but our realtor assured us it was pre-approved and that it was going to go through bc he just needed to switch out contracts (a previous buyer bowed out) he told us 6-8 weeks and this would be done. well we are going into week 9 and NO word from the bank!
so we have kind of lost hope on that one.
We are still keeping the offer on the table for the short sale - it is by far the nicest and largest out of all the homes we have looked at -
but if something comes along - and it will be quicker we might jump on it instead!
good luck and hang on! you are in for a ride!
Good luck! The only advice that I have is to be patient and remember that it is an investment so try not to get emotionally involved until the deal is done. That's the hardest part!
We bought our first home in October after a year and half of looking (after moving up to the DC metro area). We started the process looking at resales. The resale market in my area is very different than FL right now. FL has a lot more on the market which makes it a great time to buy. We made many offers on foreclosures and regular sales and ended up losing a lot of homes because of bidding wars. Seems strange in this market but the first-time homebuyer tax credit and lack of resale inventory has really gotten things moving. In August, we decided to start looking at new construction inventory homes. Builders are offering incentives (I work for one ;-) and often are willing to help with closing costs. We expanded our home search to include other areas and ended up finding a great new home in an awesome neighborhood.
1- Did you purchase a short sale, foreclosure or traditional sale? New construction
2- How long did the process take? (I've heard short sales can be nightmares). Went to deposit at the end of August and we closed on October 16.
3- How did your offer go as far as the asking price? Did you offer over? Right on? Ask for money towards closing? We offered below asking price and the builder countered but only by $2k. We also received money toward closing as part of their incentive at the time.
Ah...well, we were in that process for 2 years because we kept looking at short sales and putting offers that would never get accepted. That said, be patient, w/e you decide to do, it will happen.
1- Did you purchase a short sale, foreclosure or traditional sale? New construction. This is a new development that we came to see 2 years ago when these houses were overpriced (we could never afford them before). Now the builder dropped the prices dramatically. We tried a short sale on our block but after 4 months of waiting we ended up seeing that this one was for sale (no sign though) and gave it a shot. We got a great deal on it and the house is more than what we were looking for.
2- How long did the process take? (I've heard short sales can be nightmares). Short sales take forever and a day. The 4 that we tried getting took more than 4 months to hear back from the bank on each one. The last one we ended up backing out after 6 months (when we found our current house). If you luck out it's worth it though, my neighbors actually got theirs short sale after 2 months by calling the bank themselves every day!
3- How did your offer go as far as the asking price? Did you offer over? Right on? Ask for money towards closing? etc. We always offer waayy under just in case, because you really never know! We also asked that the seller paid all closing costs (there were no appliances in this house so it would've been ridiculous if they didn't, plus we bought directly from the builder). We offered $30k under what we bought for (they counter offered and we accepted) but I know we would've gotten the deal done if OUR realtor wouldn't have opened her big mouth and said what we had offered the last house we tried, idiot. One of the first short sales, we offered right on, and still got beat out!
Btw, with our house we took no more than 2 months to close. Builders were/are desperate to sell the few they have left because they moved on to another project.
GL!! Patience is key!:)
1. We gave up on a short sale that didn't seem likely to close in time for the original November deadline for the 1st time homebuyers credit and ended up buying through a traditional sale.
2. When we finally backed out of the short sale contract, it had been almost exactly 6 months since it was submitted to the bank with no response. The traditional sale took almost 2 months from offer to closing, but that was because the sellers wanted an extended date for closing and we were happy to push it out.
We originally were bummed to have missed out on a different short sale that went under contract last April the same day we were supposed to see it. I checked the property records just now and it STILL hasn't closed - I expect that the sellers and buyers are waiting on the bank to respond.
3. On the short sale we offered WAY below asking because asking was not in line with the comps in the community. The seller accepted, but the bank never responded so I have no idea what price that house would have finally gone for. It is back on the market but the listing price is higher than their original asking price (and completely unrealistic).
On the traditional house we finally bought we also offered much less than the asking price. We went back and forth on counter offers, but the sellers were willing to come down significantly. We did not ask for anything towards closing and were using a traditional mortgage.
Hey Mari.
We purchased our home over 5 yrs ago, so not recent, but it is a unique situation, so wanted to share to provide som insight.
When DH and I got engaged, we knew the general area we wanted to live in, but knew we couldn't afford b/c in the middle of the boom ('05). So, we began writing letters to the "F" house in the "A" neighborhoods... basically, the ugly house on the street, the fixer-upper. We had time to fix it up, since the wedding was a yr away. Anyway, Dh (mostly) and I drove around the neighborhoods searching for potential homes, and wrote down the addresses. We later looked up the owner info on the Miami-Dade website.
We seriously had over 100 addresses to ship letters to. We only go to the first batch (10 letters) b/c we ran out of stamps... and one of those 10 bit! The house wasn't on the market at all, but he was willing to sell. We saw the house, made an offer (negotiated a bit) and finally signed a contract. However, 3 days later, he called us to inform us he wanted to back out of the contract (seller remose, which doesn't exist in contract law). After 9 mo of litigation (and $$$$), we finally closed on the house (and when finally done w/ remodel, we doubled our equity!).
Anyway, my point, many abandoned homes are sometimes owned by people out of state (inheritance), and sometimes don't even realize what they own! This wasn't our case, but when doing the research, we encountered a lot of those. It is a long shot, I know, but perhaps something else to attempt while searching for the perfect home.
Best of luck to you! I know it is a stressful time, but at the end, totally worth it!
"If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane" -- Jimmy Buffett
1-short sale
2- 7 months (but we kept looking in between and making other offers)
3- we offered a little over - we had to pay for buyersclosing costs since their bank paid for sellers' cc's.
We also found that this "buyer's market" was challenging. We were looking for over 2 years and things were changing weekly. At first we could request buyer pay closing costs, but we found prices were still high. Now, that prices are lower there seems to be more demand, especially, in certain neighborhoods. So, you can get a better deal, but you may have to get into a bidding war and pay closing costs. We made about 7 offers in total (this house was the 4th offer) and they were all over asking price. The last offer we made was 30K above asking and we were still outbid by a cash offer.