House sold…now what?!

[Bamaman]

Oh man, yeah, Colorado real estate is crazy. Million dollar homes. Still wondering who can afford those 50 million - 150 million homes in Aspen

My sister sold her condo townhouse in Aspen in 2007 for enough to buy a large home in an exclusive North Carolina mountain equestrian/golf neighborhood and half of a LearJet to fly there in. Her neighborhood has its own private airport lined with King Airs.

 

[RetireeRobert]

What State is this ? California ?

Doesn't matter, California, Colorado, Arizona, real estate is hot everywhere. Situation is the same here in western Oregon. Houses sell the same weekend listed in many cases. The ones that aren't spruced up, and maybe pushing a bit too much on the price, they take a week or two to sell. Common practice of listing realtors for any house in show-ready condition is to set a deadline for offer submission, then sit back and wait for the multiple offers.

 

[brett]

We were not sure.

We sold our house. Then we decided to travel. Put everything in a 16 ft. container. What did not fit, we gave away.

Moved to a rental condo 10 months later. The real estate market was going down so we invested the monies. Rented for four years and happy that we did. Real estate continued to go down, our investments performed well.

Plus, during that time we changed our minds about what type of home or condo we wanted. It really paid dividends to wait until we were certain. Nothing wrong with renting....depending of course on the market in your area.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Northern Nevada real estate market is insane also. Put our house on the market Friday morning and 33 showings scheduled between then and Sunday afternoon. We had 4 offers and 2 were 30k over asking. Sold a 1950’s 1400 sq ft house for 400k.

 

[Retireby45ish]

Wow, this thread is insane. As the OP of three thread I’m still not sure what the answer is but it’s either going to be good to sit out for a year and rent and see…or really sad.

I just wonder what will happen. The laws of supply and demand say that something will happen to normalize this insane market. Wish I knew what the answer was…

 

[catii]

No, insanity is what we have in the Hawaii housing market. In February 2020, the median 3-bedroom home sold for $768K, median days on market=21. One year later, & it's $920K, & 11 days on the market.

Actual sale prices, $998,944 in 2020, $1,171,596 in 2021. Believe me, you would NOT want to buy one of the "median-level" houses! Yes, rent, with a fixed option to buy, if you can get it.

 

[NateW]

Keeping your home sale proceeds in cash, or readily convertible to cash, means you can make a strong purchase offer on a new home. From what I read, and from knowledge of my own area, this is the most extreme seller's market nationwide, perhaps ever. Pandemic has shut down supply, but historic low interest rates have kept demand high. Inventory of homes for sale is one month or "less". Any home coming on market goes within a few days, often with multiple offers and bidding war. Meaning, if you can be an all cash buyer, not needing to go the mortgage route, you can successfully compete for homes against most other buyers. But you have to be on your toes and be there as soon as a home is listed.

We just did this and still were out offered. On a house with a $600k list price, we offered $685,000 cash, 0 contingencies, flexible closing date and still did not get the house. It had high HOA fees and taxes for our area and needed about $15,000 worth of work. Just crazy! Then another one we wanted to see, when the listing posted, it posted as "pending". Our realtor immediately called us and said someone offered quite a bit over list sight unseen! Ugh!

 

[Retireby45ish]

We just did this and still were out offered. On a house with a $600k list price, we offered $685,000 cash, 0 contingencies, flexible closing date and still did not get the house. It had high HOA fees and taxes for our area and needed about $15,000 worth of work. Just crazy! Then another one we wanted to see, when the listing posted, it posted as "pending". Our realtor immediately called us and said someone offered quite a bit over list sight unseen! Ugh!

What area was this in? Crazy!

 

[BarbWire]

Happening to me right now. I want to be in the 4 Corners area (or Utah in general, in or south of SLC) but but my realtor contacts in SCL and in Santa Fe say either be there and ready to view --and offer -- within 2 hours of listing, or be willing to offer sight-unseen. Set up alerts on all the real-estate aps.

They both counseled: Cash, flexible closing date, be prepared to offer 20% over listing with no contingencies. I said I would NOT waive inspections, and both realtors said that would probably kill any deal I tried to make.

 

[GTFan]

Wow, that's insane. No way am I buying a resale sight-unseen or waiving inspection. We've been thinking about moving to the Melbourne, FL area and will go look at home options in Viera next month, but this doesn't sound promising.

 

[Retireby45ish]

Update. We had a full cash offer (with escalation up another 6% above ask if needed) within a day with just an inspection. Now they asked for 8k of credits based on wanting a deeper water well. I’m sticking to my guns and offering nothing. It’s a sellers market so this seems like I shouldn’t budge…my realtor said it was a bad idea and they might walk. The chances of that seem very slim to me. The realtor is just looking out for their commission. I didn’t like that.

 

[38Chevy454]

Update. We had a full cash offer (with escalation up another 6% above ask if needed) within a day with just an inspection. Now they asked for 8k of credits based on wanting a deeper water well. I’m sticking to my guns and offering nothing. It’s a sellers market so this seems like I shouldn’t budge…my realtor said it was a bad idea and they might walk. The chances of that seem very slim to me. The realtor is just looking out for their commission. I didn’t like that.

If your well works now, say no to the $8K. Not your problem if they want a deeper well.

 

[W2R]

Even here in the New Orleans suburbs, in my neighborhood there are only 9 houses listed for sale. And, of those, only one is available (a brand new listing at a ridiculously high price) as the other 8 are under contract.

Of all people, members of this forum know how deliriously happy I have been with my Dream Home, that I bought in 2015. I have posted about it a bazillion times. It is just an average 1500 sf home built on a slab back in 1965, nothing fancy, but honestly it is exactly the home I have always dreamed of owning and it is right next door to Frank's home. Every morning when I awaken I am so thankful to be living in this wonderful, perfect-for-me house.

Little did I know that less than 6 years after I bought it, prices would skyrocket like this, and availability would drop to nearly zero, though! Empty lots are selling for twice what I paid for my Dream Home just a few years ago.

Oh, and by the way, even back in 2015 I only managed to snag this home by submitting a full price cash offer before it even hit realtor dot com. I found out about its availability by seeing the realtor putting up the "for sale" sign after dark one night, and had the offer in just 20 hours later. I can't even imagine what buyers are going through now.

 

[W2R]

Update. We had a full cash offer (with escalation up another 6% above ask if needed) within a day with just an inspection. Now they asked for 8k of credits based on wanting a deeper water well. I’m sticking to my guns and offering nothing. It’s a sellers market so this seems like I shouldn’t budge…my realtor said it was a bad idea and they might walk. The chances of that seem very slim to me. The realtor is just looking out for their commission. I didn’t like that.

If it meets the standards legally required for a certification of occupancy, then I think you probably did the right thing. If they walk, somebody else will buy it.

But if the well is legally necessary for certification that it can be lived in, then you would have to replace the well anyway in order to sell it to anybody. My "Dream Home" that I purchased back in 2015, needed the under-slab plumbing replaced for certification of occupancy. So, the sellers had to replace it at their own expense (over $25K) during escrow. Didn't cost me a nickel.

 

[freedomatlast]

Glad I bought last year at this time. It seemed like a risky move at the time, (with the Dow plunging, COVID fear in full force, hoarding of supplies, etc.), but turned out to be perfect timing. 'Sold for' prices in the area average 15 to 20% higher now.

 

[bbqcoder]

Are there places where prices have dropped? Are they in the cities?

 

[brucethebroker]

Check online for "lowest housing costs in US 2021" or declining housing prices 2021. Also you tube has a number of videos on this topic. BUT, the high prices really do seem to be over most of the country.

 

[cyber888]

My sister sold her condo townhouse in Aspen in 2007 for enough to buy a large home in an exclusive North Carolina mountain equestrian/golf neighborhood and half of a LearJet to fly there in. Her neighborhood has its own private airport lined with King Airs.

Nice.

 

[RetireeRobert]

Now that covid vaccines are being widely gotten into arms, and schools are starting to reopen around the country, I think the covid induced real estate damper on supply side has got to "start" to subside as well. I t may take a year, but I think homes for sale supply will start trending back to something more "normal". Even getting supply up to 2 or 3 months from the now 1 month or less inventory will start affecting prices and sales times. As well, mortgage interest rates have also started creeping a bit higher--though still very low. Incrementally, even slightly higher mortgage rates can also very slightly dampen demand. In short, supply and demand will creep back closer to "norms". But like I said, it may take a year to dampen the insanity level to something maybe merely crazy!

 

[BarbWire]

Update. We had a full cash offer (with escalation up another 6% above ask if needed) within a day with just an inspection. Now they asked for 8k of credits based on wanting a deeper water well. I’m sticking to my guns and offering nothing. It’s a sellers market so this seems like I shouldn’t budge…my realtor said it was a bad idea and they might walk. The chances of that seem very slim to me. The realtor is just looking out for their commission. I didn’t like that.

I walked away from a house a couple of weeks ago -- offered to me pre-MLS by family of the sellers' estate.


The issue was the well for the neighborhood which serves 12 houses. Current 3-hour flow test is fine but I asked to see the last 10 years of flow tests. Yep, it has gone down steadily over the decade, and the static water level has also fallen. In other words, water availability in the high desert community is dwindling. Not what I want for my 20-25 year "forever" home.

 

[NateW]

What area was this in? Crazy!

Warrenton, Virginia. And it is a known fact the city of Warrenton was attempting to get approval to build a parkway 200 feet from this house (I am so glad mine was not the high offer!). I estimated there was about a 50% chance of that happening in 5 -10 years. I was nuts to offer in the first place, but there is just about 0 inventory here. We're expanding our search to NC, but it's not much better there.

 

[NateW]

Happening to me right now. I want to be in the 4 Corners area (or Utah in general, in or south of SLC) but but my realtor contacts in SCL and in Santa Fe say either be there and ready to view --and offer -- within 2 hours of listing, or be willing to offer sight-unseen. Set up alerts on all the real-estate aps.

They both counseled: Cash, flexible closing date, be prepared to offer 20% over listing with no contingencies. I said I would NOT waive inspections, and both realtors said that would probably kill any deal I tried to make.

We found a realtor who is quite good. She was able to get a preliminary inspection booked for me as a viewing on the house I posted about earlier in this thread (sellers knew it was an inspection, and they were ok with it). She booked two half hour time slots back to back and scheduled an inspector to do a pre purchase inspection. I was present and the inspector told me what the issues were to better enable me to decide whether or not to make an offer. It was not to develop a punch out list for the sellers to fix. It was only to help identify deal breaker problems. Written report followed after I submitted the offer. The abbreviated inspection was $300.

 

[lawman]

Aren't you going to owe quite a bit of income tax?

 

[RetireeRobert]

A tale of the insanity from Washington DC:

https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/hot-housing-seller-market/2021/03/30/id/1015777/

 

[BizzyC]

Tales of insanity from CA Bay Area:

https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/berkeley-home-sells-for-1-million-over-asking-16067210.php