Skip to main content

Is it even possible to be a cautious buyer in this market?

My husband and I have bought and sold three houses since 2013. Not really strategically, we just moved a lot but we have learned a lot of lessons along the way from dealing with a horror story of a different variety in each home. One thing we did finally learn is to be a cautious buyer, to ignore the aesthetic and focus on the meat and bones of a home, the roof, the crawl space, the attic..

Our market area right now has people plunking down huge amounts of due diligence money in order to ‘win’ against the massive competition. We really, really don’t like this. In our other three sales we never did more than a thousand dollars due diligence. The idea of blasting 10k into the universe in the hopes that the inspection won’t reveal some massive issues just doesn’t sit right with us. We just will not do it.

Speaking of inspection, lots of folks are waiving those! I mean, what? How can we compete with people who are putting up 10k due diligence and waiving inspections? And do we even want to, because those people are idiots (in my opinion.) Sellers have a great opportunity right now to unload lemons and I go to every showing assuming the seller is trying to screw us. This is a negative outlook I know but I don’t want to give the benefit of the doubt into a money pit. The last house we saw yesterday had the crawl space padlocked shut. So I am supposed to piss 10k into the wind, waive an inspection and not even see the guts of this house with my own eyeballs? How the hell am I supposed to make an offer without even seeing in there?

I can sense my agents frustration at our level of caution. I am wondering if it’s just not even going to happen for us right now. We are currently renting and are not desperate to buy. However we prefer to be paying into an asset and we have the money to buy. I’m just not willing to be reckless, is anyone managing to buy right now who isn’t just playing real estate roulette?

submitted by /u/Dingus_Guide
[link] [comments]

source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/ov65xo/is_it_even_possible_to_be_a_cautious_buyer_in/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aren't comps/CMAs useless with buyer credits at close happening now?

I'm looking into buying a new construction townhouse in my HCOL US city. I'm seeing builders offering interest rate buydowns worth $20k-$60k on $800k homes (rather than just lowering prices) in order to keep their comps high for their other units, now that buyer demand has been declining. I asked my agent about these, and he said these buydowns aren't even the full story: buyers can write all kinds of other credits into an offer, like their closing costs, prepaid sewer fees, etc. Apparently cash buyers can just write in a "buyer credit at close" for any amount in their offer. So a new townhouse that appeared to sell for $800k in the MLS might have actually been a cash offer with a $100k+ buyer credit at close, meaning the buyer only spent $700k or less in total, but to the rest of the world they can only see the $800k! So that made me realize I can't trust comps/CMAs for other new construction townhouses. The sales prices could be way lower than they appear

Fast Rising HOA Fees on NYC Condo, No Budget Provided

My wife and I are first time homeowners and could use some advice on a situation we've been having with our management company and Board. We bought a condo in Brooklyn two years ago, and since then our HOA fees have climbed dramatically. In August of last year, our fees were increased by ~30% and just yesterday we received notice that this new figure would be increased by 16% as of June 1st. The by-laws for our building state that ten days before such a change goes into effect, the Board must provide unit owners with the itemized budget upon which the new numbers were based. This didn't happen last year, and when I asked the management company about it, they just kept vaguely insisting the Board had done due diligence. After I kept pressing, they finally sent a budget that was several years old, so obviously not the one that the new numbers were based on. When I asked the management company for contact information for the Board to get further clarification, I was told that th

How to create fidelity investments current bank statement for lender during escrow

I transferred a certain amount to my bank account to complete the minimum down payment required. The bank wants a current statement of the transaction. Unfortunately, fidelity only does quarterly statements so a December statement is not available and we are due to close next week. I called fidelity and they they can only provide a letter but the bank said that won’t suffice. Any way I can find or make one of my own that has my account number/name along with all the recent month’s activities? submitted by /u/bodaciousbeans [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/zmnnqo/how_to_create_fidelity_investments_current_bank/