<p>I’m still kind of in disbelief that my wife took it upon herself to find out where the buyer worked and to call her at her place of employment to “chat”, without ever thinking to run this idea past our real estate agent. I just don’t know what good she thought could come of that. Not to mention that we are paying the real estate agent a small fortune in commissions to do all of the talking for us…</p>
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<p>Now, here’s the diliemma I’m facing at this point. Our real estate agent has no clue that “we” called the buyers and have apparently been chatting. I kinda feel like I owe our agent a heads up? Should I tell her, or just lay low?</p>
<p>Eddie Murphy’s house is in Alpine, NOT Englewood. When I was there, he comes down to the Englewood Cliff Diner we frequent to have dinner as well. Lots of my friends have seen him, he is very personal too.</p>
<p>Yes, tell the agent. She needs to know. You can be honest…say, I don’t know what my wife was thinking, just being friendly, but…? Here’s hoping the appraisal comes through, a lot of lowballing out there lately by the appraisals.</p>
<p>I did have a seller contact me once, and I was glad for it. His agent was one crazy b%$^&. I actually found the house that she had listed (and cancelled), so it was no longer on the market. I called her and asked her if it was available, she talked to the sellers who said they’d sell. She didn’t have to do a thing, it fell right into her lap. We all wanted the deal, me, the sellers, my agent. We were all working to make it happen. There was a couple of days delay on the closing, because my lender was slow. She started screaming that we were going to have to pay $1,000/day penalty. What? Not in the contract. The seller called me and asked, “Do you still want to buy my house?” Because he was listening to his crazy agent. We had a nice talk and everything was fine.</p>
<p>Artlover, you are incorrect it IS Englewood, without question…our firm was involved with several projects of his, particularly acquiring adjacent properties…i lived in the county, and 100% certain where thus home is</p>
<p>My guess is you are confusing Eddie Murphy with another comedian Chris Rock, who lives/lived in Alpine, which i am also 100% certain</p>
<p>I’ve spent a few months now observing the market around here and we’ve been going to showings the last few days… it’s definitely a sellers market here. Very low inventoy, houses are getting multiple bids and selling within days if not hours of going on the market, at well above asking price. It just goes to show how local these things are… we’re not far from Detroit, and this area is lucky to be doing much better than several of its neighbors. We are starting to worry if we’ll be able to find a house with this much competition.</p>
<p>^^ This is so interesting. I know all real estate markets are very local – e.g., what’s happening in one is not what’s happening in another – but the extremes right now are so interesting.</p>
<p>idad, your wife needs to get her head examined. And I say that in the nicest possible way. I’m sure she is a very nice person, and very well-meaning, who simply cannot imagine how difficult and/or obnoxious some people can be. Definitely inform your agent. And avoid such a meeting unless it gets to the point that the avoidance itself becomes an issue.</p>
<p>Prices seem to be all over the place, too. The house we viewed on Saturday was very charming and in good condition, but was built in the 50’s and still has original everything except maybe floors… so some work is required. Asking is 120k. This house seems around on par or maybe a bit better than other houses in this area at that price point, a lot of the houses around that price are older and don’t even have duct work done yet to add central heating and cooling, among a host of other issues,and this house was in a VERY desireable subdivision, too. So, in general, houses in this class are around what I would expect to find at this price point-- decent, but small and probably needing updating or repairs. That’s what I’ve been fidning at this price point for months now.</p>
<p>Then there are substantially bigger houses that are more up to date, are obviously in a class above the house we viewed Saturday, and a lot of them are selling for around 140k. I would guess that’s more like what they’re worth, they’re obviously better houses-- and above our budget. But quite a bit of THESE kinds of houses are also selling for 120k and I have no idea why, and those keep selling before we even find out they’re available. Some of the 140k houses need major work-- one needs a brand new septic system to be added, while some of the 120k are in pristine condition. I feel like I am missing something here.</p>
<p>Shopping for a house here is not for the faint of heart. I have NO IDEA if we’ll find what we need. We need one of the nicer ones that are inexplicably not 140k and it seems that’s a total crapshoot.</p>
<p>It is extremely important to have a realtor set you up on an “email alert” of new listings so you know when homes go on the market the very same day they get listed. This is even more critical in competitive seller’s markets, which is what we have going on right now. You can also set this up yourself on Redfin or Trulia, as well as others.</p>
<p>If you know people in a neighborhood where you want to live…tell these people to have their feelers out. Maybe you can pick something up before it hits the market.</p>
<p>A friend told us about a townhouse that was going to go for sale before it hit the market. And we ended up buying it before it hit the market.</p>
<p>Tell me about it. She basically was giving them a second bite at the home inspection apple after we’ve already cleared that hurdle.</p>
<p>What really scares me is that she is the type person who will launch into her whole life story to a complete stranger in the grocery store. So I can just imagine if she ever starting “chatting” about the house and, you know, the time this happened or we repaired that…</p>
<p>IDad, I’m not sure it’s as big a problem as you are worried about. Tell your agent. It is not unusual here for vendor and buyer to be in touch. I agree that your agent should know.</p>
<p>I’m not too worried about, now that the buyers aren’t stopping by for cocktails or dinner tonight.</p>
<p>I’m happy to meet with them and go over stuff, but only with the agent’s OK and only after the deal is signed, sealed, and delivered, ready for closing. As soon as they have their loan approval, they can’t back out.</p>
<p>“But quite a bit of THESE kinds of houses are also selling for 120k and I have no idea why, and those keep selling before we even find out they’re available. Some of the 140k houses need major work-- one needs a brand new septic system to be added, while some of the 120k are in pristine condition. I feel like I am missing something here”</p>
<p>What you are possibly missing is that the extremely low priced deals for great houses are often short sales. Sometimes it takes a big delay to get them through, sometimes they do fall through. But they are great deals. Many agents won’t talk about them much because they might offer less than the normal commission. If you are interested in these and don’t have a specific timeframe, perhaps seek out someone who is knowledgeable in short sales, or at least willing to do them. I check the listings every day, and if my agent hasn’t brought it to my attention, I ask him. A great site is redfin.com, they tell you all sorts of info about the house. What it has sold for in the last several years, if it’s a short or REO, how many times they dropped their price, comparables.</p>
<p>Hmm… they could have sold as short sales, I hadn’t thought of that. Most of the short sales I’ve seen have actually had comparable asking rices to the regular sales, but there are a lot more of them… I bet their prices aren’t getting driven up so much by competition. We ruled those out because we HAVE to have a house by November. My cousin just backed out of a short sale after waiting almost a year on it… We have some time, but not that much time.</p>
<p>I am getting emails for listings every day, but it’s pretty much the same ten houses over and over again, most of which are about 20 minutes away from where we need to be and need major work. Other, more desirable houses come onto the market, apparently, according to zillow, trulia, realtor.com, etc-- but I am not getting any of these houses to my email and they are selling so fast I don’t think we’d have even been able to schedule a showing. Seems like we are always a day late. New houses only show up in my listing emails once every few weeks…</p>
<p>This has been an interesting thread to lurk in to see things from the sellers perspective. I don’t mean to hijack. Maybe I’ll make a thread about buying.</p>
I’m sure she is a very nice person, and very well-meaning, who simply cannot imagine how difficult and/or obnoxious some people can be. Definitely inform your agent. And avoid such a meeting unless it gets to the point that the avoidance itself becomes an issue.</p>