I sure hope so. But it might be the case that no one with that extra $200K wants to buy it because of the neighborhood.
I worry that DH and I might have “over-improved” our current house for our neighborhood. We sold our “forever” house four and a half years ago and downsized to the next town over. We’ve improved the new house with stuff we’re really enjoying, but I suspect we have overspent for this town – the schools are not particularly good, so people with lots of $$$ won’t be interested in our house. I suspect the money we put into the house might only bring its value up by 75% of that amount.
ETA: I just checked in greatschools.org – our old town’s rating for schools was a 10; our new town’s rating is a 5. Big difference.
Love your “tarp for rain” - LOL. In my neck of the woods, city hall folks drive around looking for signs of construction and then check if there was a permit pulled for that address.
Yes we are! I think I posted in the Flip 5 thread that we also found some traces of rat activity in the attic plus a lot of wear and tear and deferred maintenance. We only asked the sellers to service all gas burning equipment in the house and to give us X off the price. No other repairs because we did not have good vibes about the contractor they wanted to use. So we will be taking on the job of bringing this place to livable conditions. I will be channeling you, coralbrook, while removing rat poop from the attic!
I’m following this with interest. Younger D and her BF are looking to buy a house in northern Ca. The market in theit area is hot in the lower price ranges. They have already bid on 2 properties and didn’t get them. They both went for over asking and also over appraisal. Another interesting thing that we haven’t seen in our area is in both rounds the sellers asked for 17 days to find a replacement property and also for 15-30 days free rent back. Houses are also selling in the first few days after listing. It puts us in the situation of not being able to view the properties. We have to trust they have a good agent so they don’t end up in coral Brooks clients situation.
They made another offer yesterday on an empty house. Keeping fingers crossed. The pictures look like the house is decent but could use The Coralbrook touch.
Interesting to learn that in different parts of Ca there are different ways of doing things. In our area and the area my H spec built in the seller paid the escrow fees and title insurance. Where my D is looking the buyer pays. Another thing is here the termite inspection is in the offer paperwork not in my D’s area. H and I will go up and see the house if they get an accepted offer.
My philosophy has been to buy in a good school district before you even have kids. D and her BF are priced out of the areas with scores on Goodschool in the 8-10 range. The house they are bidding on is listed as a 6. Some of the areas have been a 5. Im hoping they don’t buy something and in the future scramble to move for a better school.
Congrats @BunsenBurner
Our old house we had rats in our attic. We would sometimes hear them running around at night. It seemed as soon as we got rid of them they would return whenever any neighbor started doing any earthmoving on our adjacent properties. When we built this house we did a great job and knock on wood haven’t had a rat or mouse inside in the 18 yrs we have lived here. They do like to get in the well of our pool cover. I think during the drought they came looking for water.
I don’t know about Northern CA but I think its similar
Buyer and Seller split escrow fee 50/50
Seller pays for title insurance for the buyer
Buyer pays for separate title insurance required by a lender if getting a loan
Buyer pays for home inspection
Seller pays for Termite inspection and Termite repairs, if required in contract. A lot of people think banks require Termite clearance. They don’t and its not required
Buyer may negotiate that Seller provide Home Warranty. This is not required and seems to be a recent ‘expectation’ of real estate agents. All part of the never ending CYA
Seller pays real estate agent commissions (always negotiable)
However, in a Seller’s market they can try to negotiate a lot of this out of contract such as termite or Home Warranty or push some costs back to Buyer
There are a lot of ways to make their offer ‘sweeter’ than other offers, without having to raise their offer price.
Try doing a home inspection before making offer. This will cost $400 or so. If everything OK, make offer with no inspection contingency which is extremely valuable to Sellers
If they really love the house they can put a large deposit in offer (greater than 3%). This shows Seller that they are very serious and won’t back out
If they cannot get home inspection done before offer, tighten up the days. Standard is 17 days. Offer 10 days and be ready to hustle around fast
Work with a lender that can guarantee a 21 day loan closing. If they can close in 21 days on a vacant house, that is golden. Or maybe the lender can guarantee loan approval within x days. They can tighten up the loan approval contingency.
If they have enough cash to increase their down payment they can waive the appraisal contingency.
Most important…buy the bad/small/ugly house in the best neighborhood.
Actually when you buy from the banks, they want full control of the deal, so they paid full escrow and title fees, buyers are only responsible for the transfer taxes. The bank use CAR forms for contract, but has a rider thick like a book to “revise” everything in the form, so we spent hours just to go through the contract, signing/initial every thing. The broker told us, take it or leave it, we have 20 buyers waiting behind you. By the time we finished the signing, only thing still valid in the CAR forms is the price.
So, things like if you do not close in 10 days, each day they charge $1000, was in the contract. And there is no TDS, no guarantees, waiver of inspections and so on.
It is interest to know and I calculated it out using an spread sheet that you have to pay $386,350 property TRANSFER TAX if you sell a $20,000,000 house in San Francisco, there are plenty in that price range. That is an incredible amount of money just for the transfer tax, good enough to buy the whole street in Detroit. Nevertheless, the property tax for the buyer is around $260,000/year, without even open the door.
@artloversplus - my H found that same link. We have purchased a large number of properties and sold a large number and H had never come across a escrow that didn’t split the escrow fees. He also had never come across an offer that didn’t have a termite inspection as part of the offer.
As my D has looked I’ve noticed quite a number of quick flips. They are terrible. They all have that quick trip to Home Depot look. No walls moved or even new cabinets. @coralbrook houses are a huge step above. Her buyers are getting a quality product.
The way CB is going, she kept on upgrade her purchases, it will be a 20M flip soon enough.
In real estate, its so easy to “upgrade” then “down grade”, when you see some thing better, you will go for it, if you had the $.
Most contract start with “county custom” for closing in a purchase agreement. You can negotiate any way you wish on that subject.
I am a hostage in my house. Had to take the truck in to fix something that was supposed to be fixed last year. Now I am not passing smog to get truck registered. They have been holding truck hostage for 2 days now and I cannot get out to the project. This is very frustrating to me. I’m trying to manage the poor guys by phone and they hate it!!! It’s like Mom is calling to check up on them
My electrician is at the house today and he is going to be very upset if I don’t show up to pay him at the end of the day !! And I know the owners are in there just adding more stuff to his list without my counseling on how much more budget will be spent.
Lots of exterior trim work going on to get ready for painting and priming. And electrical should be all dialed in today to get ready to start drywall tomorrow.
Today I have to design a front porch covered entry to add curb appeal to the house. We have to start building it tomorrow.
Do the owners have a car? If so, I would halt ALL work until they agree to pick you up and drop you off. If all they are doing is sitting around the project, they can surely come and get you!!
My carpenter did meet me at truck repair shop and give me a ride home yesterday morning, but I hate for him to be taken off job just to give me a ride so I can stand there and look over their shoulders. Not near a Car2Go or ZipCar and I probably could rent a car or travel by Uber, but I thought truck was only going to take 1 day so I didn’t organize myself well
I think owners were just in there this morning before they left for work. I gave the young woman a big task this morning. She has a long list of materials, with detailed SKU nbrs, that she is at Home Depot ordering for delivery. Normally I would order that stuff, but her Mother gets military discount so she likes to have her Mom use the discount to get the large expensive stuff. They have been very good about handing us a $1,000 Home Depot prepaid gift card every week to run for supplies. That is very helpful.
