<p>Ema- every so often we receive a letter from someone interested in buying our house. If we were interested in selling, I think we’d follow up on them. They usually just state that they are looking in the area for a home like ours and to please contact them if we have any interest in selling. The last one stated that they were willing to pay above market rates. I don’t think that kind of statement is necessary, as it doesn’t really mean anything until you get into the details.
There’s nothing wrong with a flyer or letter sent out to homes that you’re especially interested in. Not much to lose, and you may get a bite. </p>
<p>What I find when looking on realtor.com or some of the other sites is that most of the desirable properties are already “pending.” It seems like they are almost sold before they even go on the market. Have you considered working with a realtor? Sometimes they know about upcoming sales before the rest of us.</p>
<p>jshain, that may be true for actual listings but realtors often know of homes that are coming onto the market before they’re listed. My D and her H sold their home in this way, and my H and I sold one of our homes like this last year. Before the listing, before any sign.</p>
<p>^I agree, alwaysamom, particularly if the realtor “specializes” in a certain neighborhood. Many times a realtor lives within that neighborhood and knows beforehand when homes go on MLS. Having said that, they may also have MULTIPLE clients for that same house. I find that Redfin will basically alert you quicker than a realtor will if a listing is outside their target area. The realtors in my areas of interest are so busy right now, I feel that I can stay on top of things better than they can since their plates are so full.</p>
<p>Not that it’s anybody’s business in particular, but our financial situation is worked out. It’s BF’s mortgage and BF’s house until we get married. He was going to buy a house anyway before we got together and moved in together. We are going to get married. We have discussed this thoroughly.</p>
<p>I try really hard to not derail threads with my personal life, and I am not always good at it, so I would prefer if this thread not turn into a big thing where we pick apart every piece of my plans and I have to explain every little detail to satisfy everyone. I get that not everybody is going to agree with what I am doing and would prefer to agree to disagree. I would like to just talk about houses. :(</p>
<p>I think houses here are selling before they ever even appear on realtor.com, because when we drive through the neighborhood I see a lot of sold houses that I’ve never seen before and I am watching the market as closely as a non-realtor can.</p>
<p>We are working with a realtor, but I am not sure if she is working out… I seem to be finding houses on realtor.com and approaching her about them instead of the other way around. In fairness, there are hardly any houses coming onto the market near as I can tell and I check for new listings every morning at 9am, but I don’t really feel like she has done anything for us yet besides letting us into the houses. This lady is a friend of my mother’s who talked a big talk when we ditched our FIRST realtor, who we stopped working with because she was extremely difficult and kept trying to hard-sell my dad at showings while BF and I were viewing the house. The new realtor told us she did this area but she obviously isn’t “connected” there, which seems like it may be something we need in this market. I am seeing now that we didn’t handle this as well as we could have. Nobody we know has bought a house in the last 20 years and it seems we are not getting the best advice.</p>
<p>realtors have their own clients. they will show it to those clients first before it is officially on the market. other realtors in the same office also find out about the upcoming listing and show it to their clients. that’s why homes are often pending before they appear online.</p>
<p>So true! Our photographs were taken Thursday, and I have already seen them, yet our home isn’t even on MLS yet. It is being shown today by an “in-office” realtor. I think they create their own “pocket listings” so they can sell it within the same office and not have to share the commission with another agent from a different company. I am okay with this because I will then save 1% commission.</p>
<p>We get those unsolicited letters all the time…I just throw them in the trash.<br>
Every house on the market in our neighborhood in the past six months has sold for wildly more than anyone reasonable would have thought possible. I don’t see why a seller would want to miss out on the crazy auction effect.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t work with one realtor. I worked with 4 over a weekend, based on what they showed me and chemistry, I picked one. The one we worked with turned out to be a gem. He found us an apartment for purchase, we had to to back it of it, he made sure we got our deposit back. It offered to pay him some money for the commission he lost, he refused, then he found us a great rental while we continue to ponder. </p>
<p>While we were looking to buy and rent, we got to see apartments before they were listed. </p>
<p>Ema - buying a piece of real estate is like having a child, much easier to get and much harder to get rid of. If your name is not going to be on it, then why spend so much time on it. If your name is going to be added to the mortgage and title later, make sure your BF has enough life insurance to cover the mortgage. Not sure what your state’s divorce law is like, but at many states, assets acquired before marriage do not need to be divided equitably if there is a divorce, so if you are going to get married soon, why not wait until you are married before buying a house.</p>
<p>It was a bit of a long story. I am changing jobs and the apartment looked better in picture than in real life. The seller represented the apartment bigger than it really was. Since we backed out, the market has been going down in NYC. We found a rental around the corner from where we were going to buy. The seller has dropped the price already.</p>
<p>We were at one point working with two realtors and it got really awkward, I showed up to a showing with the current lady and the other realtor just so happened to stop by to scope out the house and saw us. They both got upset and said I had to choose and the one I didn’t choose made a scene and stomped out. Since current lady is my mom’s friend I was really hoping this was going to work out, and I wish I knew how much of her lack of anything whatsoever useful is because of her and how much of it is just because the market is hopeless. I talked to her quite a bit before we got started and I thought she was going to be a good choice. I guess I’ll have to take my chances with multiple realtors again to find out. I have the name of a lady who appears to live and specialize in our favorite neighborhood, so I am going to give her a call.</p>
<p>It is very hard to guage the competentcy of a realtor without seeing them actually organizing a home tour for you, or representing you as a buyer or seller, or other related activity. Some realtors are better at listing and selling your home while others are better at finding you a home. I usually get a good first impression with most realtors… until they start working for me. My wife and I took multiple realtors for a “test drive” when we were looking for a new home outside the neighborhood that we live, but only did so one at a time, always breaking it off with them in a more formalized fashion before moving on to the next one.</p>
<p>We have an offer coming in soon on the very first showing of our home before it has gone on MLS. Our realtor’s assistant goofed and didn’t get our home on MLS for Saturday, as we instructed. We very possibly could have gotten multiple offers if it had gone online. Instead, it was just shown to clients of my realtor. I am not ruling out that this mistake was intentional, but I can not prove it. I think my realtor is a very honorable person and it is quite possible and even more likely that his assistant made an honest mistake. I emailed her Saturday morning saying it didn’t look like our home was online and when I didn’t get a reply from her (which fuels my suspicion of deliberate oversight in getting my home on MLS) I went to an open house that my realtor was working and
notified him. </p>
<p>I think I have no choice now but to hold firm to my asking price since multiple offers would have likely fetched me a higher price. I’ll save $9,000 in commissions for representing both me and the buyer and I may hold firm on only paying for any section 1 termite repairs rather than the proverbial “laundry list” of repairs that another buyer potentially could have asked for based on the home inspection. </p>
<p>I’m hopefully going to make lemonade out of a lemon (losing a key weekend on MLS)…</p>
<p>We went online tonight at about 5:10 PM Pacific. It is now a little past 6 PM. In 1 hour we have received 3 calls from realtors, two of which are seeing our home tonight and one is seeing it tomorrow morning. One realtor who is seeing our home tonight said that they were prepared and likely writing an offer. Wonder what would have happened if we went online on Saturday morning instead of Sunday night?</p>
<p>We just got another call to see it tonight as I was typing this…</p>
<p>I received 3 more calls after I posted at 6:14 PM Pacific #2457. I made an appointment for 7:30 PM and another for 8:30 PM Sunday night. The 7:30 PM appointment was driving up from San Diego and got stuck in traffic and ended up arriving when the other potential buyer was still here, according to his realtor who called me asking if they could extend their appointment time, which I said was no problem. My realtor texted me saying that he has 3 offers that will be submitted on Monday. The Redfin link of my home is attached below. It is on one of the worst lots in my neighborhood. I think the “buzz” today was because it was priced “under” $900,000 when most of the homes in my tract are selling over $900 or even above $1 Mil. I have absolutely no idea where the offers will come in tomorrow. I want the BEST offer that will stick, not necessarily the highest one. </p>
<p>Here’s the home we are in escrow on, up in Walnut Creek CA. I hope you like it as much as we do. Incredibly unique. Click on the pictures after you open the page:</p>