Yea, we tried that but he doesn't even want to talk. He has it in his mind that this house is worth $300k right now and doesn't want to hear anything else. I would have gladly paid that earlier this year but I think he's several months too late with that price as the market here is tanking big time as well. He owns this house outright and short of the $3500 yearly tax bill and the $1000 insurance bill, he won't loose by holding out. Eventually the market will come back around and he'll be able to get that price if he were to actually list the property. But I think he's basing his current asking price on what he wants to net from the transaction. The whole idea of doing this as a private transaction just goes to support that theory. I understand that doing a "For Sale by Owner" can save a seller a lot of money in fees, but it's just plain stupid when your trying to do it from 15 time zones away. His response to our $275k offer was "the house is not on the open market. I am not in a position where I have t
o sell. It is being offered at the moment more for a situational circumstance." I think we would be better off just looking elsewhere. He's obviously not serious about selling and thinks I'm just going to continue to rent this place like I've been doing. His story may or may not change once we leave but at this point, we've lost interest in buying this place. We'll just keep looking for the time being. There are a lot of houses available in neighboring towns and more getting listed every day. It is a very strong buyers market here and I'm even seeing some sellers throwing in incentives like big screen TVs and in one case a huge 1 piece slate pool table, just to get buyers interested. Several of the houses we've looked at have been on the market since the beginning of the year and two have been vacant for even longer. Seems like the market peaked about the end of January. Now I'm just trying to decide how hard to push to find something right now or wait until spring. The real estate market real!
ly slows
down around here once the weather turns and I'm not thrilled with the idea of having to move once the snow starts. The driveway here seriously sucks and it'll become exponentially more difficult to back my 24ft enclosed car trailer up the driveway once it freezes. I have a hard enough time driving up the hill in 4wd once the ground freezes and because there is insufficient room to turn the trailer around up here, I'll have to back up the whole 1000 feet up the steep grade. The plan is to use the trailer to move instead of renting a truck or hiring a mover. Not that I think a moving truck make it up that driveway in the winter. There is a reason why this house has two oil tanks.
Anyhow, I figure houses in this area lost around 15% of their value since the end of January. I just need to decide if I think they are going to continue to drop and wait for spring or if they've bottomed out and I should jump now. Back in the early 90's, values dropped like 30% over two years and took many years to recover. I don't want to jump too soon and buy a house that can still loose value, but I can screw myself by waiting too long. Right now, the trend looks to be that prices have fluctuating up and down since late August, in the case of this house between $270k & $280k, according to Zillow.Com. I'm seeing some small gains over the last couple of weeks on the several properties I've been watching but I don't know if that will continue. I almost want to say I shouldn't wait much longer.
Thanks,
Walt
-----Original Message-----
From: David Gersic [mailto:info@zaccaria-pinball.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006 11:35 AM
To: Walt@Walt-n-Ingrid.Com
Subject: Re: DML: Daktoberfest Update and Walt's other long winded
Ramblings
On Saturday 28 October 2006 08:35 am, Walt@Walt-n-Ingrid.Com wrote:
> trip from CO, I received an email from the owner (who now lives in
> Australia) asking if I would be interested in buying the house.
Given the research you've done already, and the way the housing market is
tanking big time right now, I'd offer the owner $250k and see if he takes it.
I don't know about your local market, but out here stuff that used to sell in
days or a week is now sitting on the market for over a month, and prices are
dropping $10K at a shot. It's turning in to a real buyer's market. He may
*want* $300K for the place, and last year he probably could have gotten it,
but right now he's lucky to have a buyer that's interested in buying it from
him. And his sudden interest in selling it, after not being interested
before, tells me that he *has* been watching the market and knows exactly
what's going on. He's hoping to get out with as much cash as possible before
the price drops through the floor on him. Use that to your advantage and
bargain *hard* with him. He's waited too long to sell, and he knows it.
You might also check in to what the Australian market is like. I believe I've
heard that housing prices there are tanking as well. If he's got money tied
up in over-valued properties in two markets that are going down, he's going
to be very interested in rescuing as much cash as he can.
Good luck with your purchase and/or search, though.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2006 - 01:35:00 EST