<p>“You can buy a modern 3 br 2 ba place for 79,000?”</p>
<p>Yes! And it’s only a two-hour commute to St. Louis … each way of course. Most who choose to live there arrange three or four-day work weeks to reduce road hours.</p>
<p>Wow…$79K wouldn’t even cover the down payment here.</p>
<p>Another anecdote; a friend lost out on the bidding on a house in Los Altos recently. The high bidder didn’t name a price, he simply gave instructions to the selling agent that he would pay $5000 over the highest submitted bid. This used to happen during the bubble days of 2006-2007, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it this time around.</p>
<p>Wow…vballmom…and this time…there is more room for prices to go even higher…</p>
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<p>In the 1970s, I believe that there were federal tax benefits to companies to support van pools. A company that I worked for in the 1980s had a very developed van pool system. They would kick in money and the users would pay a monthly fee. The driver of the van didn’t have to pay the fee for the month. I think that full routes could take 60-90 minutes and these things left quite early in the morning. This also allowed those that lived in the city to have the option of not having to own their own vehicle. As far as I can tell, it had benefits for reducing traffic, reducing dependence on foreign oil and saving money for those that used the vanpools. The downside was schedule flexibility. The folks not driving could sleep or work in the van or just chat with others. This was before the days of personal gadgets. I could see a 2-hour commute with vanpool support or even with some local dorm-style housing.</p>
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<p>Just like a market buy order in the stock market.</p>
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<p>There was an auction in London last year for one of the racquets that Djokovic used to win Wimbledon last year. A friend of mine wanted it. The auction was pretty slow for a while in the $500-$600 range and as the auction was nearing the close, there was a flurry of action getting it up to about $2,000. My friend offered $4K at the last minute and won - I think that he flew in to pick it up. I wanted to bid on it but there was no way I could do so as I didn’t have a UK address to set up a UK Ebay account (a requirement of the auction). I think that he got a bargain. Federer’s racquets at certain venues can go for much, much more.</p>
<p>Well, we put my parents’ house on the market on Sunday (with an Open House) and received 2 offers this morning!</p>
<p>One offer is $10k less and the other is about $20k less than asking price.</p>
<p>this home is in Orange County Calif. </p>
<p>I think the market is coming back. That said, several years ago, we could have gotten a lot more for the house. :(</p>
<p>Wow 2 offers…nice…</p>
<p>Are you going to counter for list? How hot is the Greater LA area? I take it that it’s nothing like the Bay Area.</p>
<p>That’s great news Mom2. Congrats. Any chance OC could adopt Bakersfield, Las Vegas and Phoenix? Those areas could sure use some of OC’s recovery power.</p>
<p>vball,</p>
<p>you must’ve closed your deal. How is the construction going, any suprises?</p>
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<p>That’s where I am now, 15 years in house, getting ready to put it on market. De-cluttering aka getting ready for huge yard sale, donating to Goodwill, and straight up putting stuff by the curb for people to take. Sort of packing.</p>
<p>Hope to get the house done in 2 weeks - still need to paint some rooms, powerwash deck, do some minor fixes. We’re in Central Ohio in a very desirable small, old, college town that people often compare to Normal Rockwell paintings. So glad not to be underwater but haven’t figured out the price yet, have a meeting with realtor to walk through next week and see some comps in person.</p>
<p>As this is CC, it’s probably relevant to say that the main reason for this is that S is going to college in fall and a 130 year old home and large yard are more than D and I need or want. But we love this town so will look for a rental or condo, depending on how the sale works out.</p>
<p>Things are moving here too, just recently. How I price will be important.</p>
<p>I hate selling houses. 15 years ago I swore I’d never do it again. But here we go :)</p>
<p>Almost done cleaning out 25 years of life and getting the house ready. Realtor wants to have a realtor open house three weeks from today.</p>
<p>Gulp. I guess we’re really doing it.</p>
<p>Hi all, I posted a new thread last week about the timing of offers for our San Jose house (which went on the market last week–thanks for the responses, they were very helpful). It was priced aggressively to sell. We would have been very happy with a quick sale at list just to avoid the hassle of having a home on the market but hoped for more. We had two offers within two days–one a little above list and the other a whopping 4% over with “as is” and a 30 day free rent back after closing! Yippee! It also had something I had heard about but never seen–a letter from the proposed buyers about how much they loved the home, with an attached family photo. They put 3% down with contingencies to close in just 7 days (tomorrow) and are putting down a huge chunk at closing. The H’s employer is a big-name local tech co. and he is clearly exercising some options. The only difficult decision was they required us to accept their offer prior to the open house scheduled for Saturday (preempting a bidding war).
A sale in our zip code closed escrow at 8% over list the day before and our area is REALLY heating up, so not as easy as you think the decision should be–1% of sale price is about $10,000. After some consideration, we accepted and are pretty confident that we made the right choice, bird in the hand and all.<br>
Thanks to everyone on this thread! I felt I came too late to the game to post (as a 2012 seller) but I have read every post if you can believe it, searching for nuggets of advice and things to think about.<br>
Good luck to everyone and my sympathies to people trying to pack up long-time homes. We did about 75% of that to get ready for listing and it is really a PITA!</p>
<p>WW I think you priced it too low. My aunt’s house is off Almaden and she got 1.2 some thing for a similar size as yours. That was before the war started.</p>
<p>WordWorld that’s awesome! Congrats! I think having a good contract in hand is well worth the what-if of an open house. </p>
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<p>Yes, we’ve closed and are almost ready to submit plans to the city for permits. Construction won’t start for another 6-8 weeks, although some demolition can happen before then. We’re getting bids from 4-6 general contractors, the exact number depending on who can meet our bidding deadline. The only surprise so far was from the first GC who said the job would take 6 months, NOT what I wanted to hear! </p>
<p>Another anecdote - the house around the corner from our new one just went pending sale with 8 offers in 2 days.</p>
<p>facebook is going to IPO in May, we shall see what is going to happen afterwards. The area across the bridge(Ardenwood & Newark) from MP is heating up as well, not much so than MP, MV area though. I was lucky to buy it at the rock bottom price, now I know I can make some serious dollar with or without the tenants being evicted.</p>
<p>Artlover, true, but prices in the area vary widely based on schools, view, location, size, age, specific neighborhoods, and lots of other factors. We are happy with the last offer, we might have made a little more if we had turned it down but the negatives to doing that far outweighed accepting the offer. It is what it is (my mantra for the last two months).<br>
I learned A LOT from Jym’s experience with selling her parents’ house long distance and VBall’s problems, too (not to mention other sellers here). Since we are moving out of state in a few months, we wanted eager, solvent buyers and that is what we got.</p>
<p>Wow. You owners in the Bay Area are sitting on gold.</p>
<p>WordWorld…I think you did the right thing.</p>
<p>Artloversplus…very nice.</p>
<p>VeryHappy…good luck…</p>
<p>WW, you are in the area, I am not, so you have a better knowledge than I. I saw it is pending, really happy for you and based on you have to move out of state, it is the best decision.</p>
<p>Here is an article about the next wave of Foreclosures</p>
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