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Do any real estate search engines let you filter by how many stories the house is? Is that information even in MLS? I'm nowhere near buying I just... like to look at houses. I found a newly renovated 18k sq ft mansion for 1.25 million dollars in my zip code, that looked pretty cool.
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Apr 4, 2014 18:05
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FISHMANPET posted:Do any real estate search engines let you filter by how many stories the house is? Is that information even in MLS? I'm nowhere near buying I just... like to look at houses. Just remember, you're going to have to clean that 18,000 square feet. Then again, if you can afford a $1,250,000 house, you can probably afford a cadre of house cleaners to clean it for you...
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Apr 4, 2014 18:35
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nebby posted:$900k for a 1400sqft 2 bed 1 bath home that needs $15k worth of work. FISHMANPET posted:I found a newly renovated 18k sq ft mansion for 1.25 million dollars in my zip code, that looked pretty cool. The proximity of these two posts makes me smile.
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Apr 4, 2014 19:02
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daggerdragon posted:Just remember, you're going to have to clean that 18,000 square feet. Then again, if you can afford a $1,250,000 house, you can probably afford a cadre of house cleaners to clean it for you... It has 2 in-law suites and servants quarters. It's a steal because it's in a somewhat rougher part of town, whereas there are houses 1/3 the size on one of our lakes that's 2-3 times the cost.
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Apr 4, 2014 19:06
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FISHMANPET posted:Do any real estate search engines let you filter by how many stories the house is? Is that information even in MLS? I'm nowhere near buying I just... like to look at houses. I believe it's in MLS data that agents have access too but I don't know if the major sites allow sorting by that data. Usually you can just do a search and use phrases like "single-level", "ranch", or something like that in the keyword box.
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Apr 4, 2014 19:19
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nebby posted:we came in 5% below list price hoping to negotiate up to a few % above. house sold at 20% above list price. more than $900k for a 1400sqft 2 bed 1 bath home that needs $15k worth of work. lol at this market, i'll stick to renting. Depending on the market/location you're in, houses might just sell above asking all the time. I bought my house in 2010, which was deep into the poo poo real-estate-wise. We caught the tail-end of the Obama $8k new home buyer credit, to give you an idea of how bad the market still was, nationally. San Jose didn't give a gently caress. The houses dropped a bit, sure, but they were still fairly expensive, there was no shortage of buyers, and every house we bid on went for 5-15% over asking. We bid on and lost five houses, three of which we went 5% over asking on. We ended up going about 6% over asking on the house we ended up with. nebby posted:it has to crash at some point, right? Safe as houses. Inverse Icarus fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Apr 4, 2014 |
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Apr 4, 2014 19:32
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nebby posted:we came in 5% below list price hoping to negotiate up to a few % above. house sold at 20% above list price. more than $900k for a 1400sqft 2 bed 1 bath home that needs $15k worth of work. lol at this market, i'll stick to renting. it has to crash at some point, right? You're looking on the peninsula, right? No, it doesn't have to crash at some point. It probably will, but that could be in two years or in twenty. I lived on the peninsula until 2009 when I bought... in the east bay. We bought on the downhill side of the falling market (caught the falling knife to be honest) but we're well back above what we paid now, so I'm comfortable. At that time we were definitely looking at houses on the peninsula too, but even in the shittiest parts of redwood city (and there are parts of redwood city way shittier than I had imagined at the time!) we saw crappy houses that were seriously overpriced compared to nice houses in nice areas of east bay. We even looked in (gulp) east palo alto. Ughhhh. I bought in Concord and I'm really happy about it. My wife's commute to the city on BART is the same as it would have been on Caltrain from RWC. Our neighborhood is nice, the weather is nice, the town is nice, and the price was very very nice. e. I bet you can get a comparable 14002ft 2/1 for $300k in a decent neighborhood here. e2. Here, go look at this tomorrow and tell me that's not a better deal for your $430k. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Apr 4, 2014 |
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Apr 4, 2014 19:37
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lumbergill posted:Roll the wheel on the lovely house lottery! I think wiring shouldn't be too terrible - 1960s is a bit late for knob and tube, right? - but I'm paranoid about the roof and foundation. And the lovely house lottery says… termites. Had the inspection done yesterday, there's an active infestation of subterranean termites along one wall. My realtor and the inspector didn't seem too concerned, and we should be able to get the seller to pay for treatment, but I'm worried about them having caused serious damage to the structure of the house. There doesn't really seem to be any way to tell if this is the case without opening up the wall. I'm going to get a termite company to try and estimate the extent of the damage, but I don't know how effective that will be (the woman on the phone seemed pretty clueless as to what was involved, and had no idea when I asked her what methods they used to assess the extent of damage to internal walls). Everything else seemed fine, and the inspector said there was nothing he would see as a deal breaker -- but the prospect of an exterior wall collapsing into a pile of sawdust is pretty terrifying. Do Never Buy?
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Apr 4, 2014 19:39
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Leperflesh posted:You're looking on the peninsula, right? No, it doesn't have to crash at some point. It probably will, but that could be in two years or in twenty. I do feel the market is probably at an all-time high right now, up 20-30% in just the last 9-12 months. I'm willing to pay a premium for a home here, but like to think I'm not a sucker. When you find yourself in a bidding war with 10 other people for a 1400 sqft home that grazes a million bucks you can't help but feel like the winning bidder is actually the loser in the transaction. Fortunately we have a really good deal on rent in a nice place from a landlord who has no interest in selling so it makes the decision pretty easy.
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Apr 4, 2014 19:53
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Makes sense, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from renting. But I don't agree with your all-time high assessment. It's only April. Unless something really bad happens to the economy in the next six months, I expect prices to peak this year in July or August like they normally do. e. Maybe as QE gets tapered down to nothing (I think by October?) that will push interest rates up which could put a damper on buying? Other than that, what trigger are you seeing for a crash in the near future? Just out of curiosity.
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Apr 4, 2014 20:00
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Leperflesh posted:Makes sense, and I wouldn't discourage anyone from renting. I don't really know if or why a crash would happen. I do know that investors have really pulled out of California in general due to the yield on properties no longer being competitive with low risk fixed income. (For example this place we just lost out on will likely be yielding less than 5% rent on the sale price, and that's not considering *any* maintenance costs, taxes, etc.) So right now you're bidding against other individuals who want to move into the place, so the market is going to be much more sensitive to the job market and tech IPO market (in addition to interest rates) than it has been when investors were making the large bids. If private equity slows down or the equities market crashes I guess this would now trickle into this area's real estate market as the influx of tech millionaires would slow down.
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Apr 4, 2014 20:16
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Ohhh, okay yeah that makes sense. Not that this will be the all-time high looking back from 50 years from now, just that prices have never been higher in RWC. That makes sense because the entire peninsula market during the 07/08 crash was weird. The highest-end properties lost a ton of value - I'm talking $1M+ houses - but the low end only lost a small amount (like a 20% to 40% decline, still significant but not as bad) and that value recovered very quickly. There's just a historic shortage of housing on the peninsula, and combined with a rapid recovery of high-salary employment, demand came back really fast. All-cash offers are still usually investors, but the big institutional and foreign investment activity does seem to have waned as prices recovered. I don't know how much startups actually affect things. Startups tend to be big news but not represent that many employees. The big employers and how they're doing probably is more significant. I'm really just speculating, though, I haven't tried to find hard numbers.
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Apr 4, 2014 20:24
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FCKGW posted:I believe it's in MLS data that agents have access too but I don't know if the major sites allow sorting by that data. It could be done, but few people use advanced search filters. I think it's a combination of not-good-enough UI, and people being afraid of missing their dream house because they ticked a checkbox.
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Apr 4, 2014 21:52
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So cruising around Zillow, I found a house that looks like it's 1 story. Look at the pictures, and it's actually got a pretty sizeable attic, as well as a finished basement. Zillow lists it as 2 stories, as pulled from county property tax records. Trulia lists at as 1 story, also from property tax records. Redfin doesn't tell, presumably because Redfin thinks it's not actually for sale. Realtor.com lists it as both 2 stories from public records, and 1.5 stories, presumably from MLS data. A local realtor's website lists it as 1.5 stories, presumably also from MLS data. It appears that the house has had a pending offer since March 11th (which Redfin, Realtor.com, and local site agree on, Trulia just says it's off the market) so in this case Zillow is just wrong. In other words, lol real estate 
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Apr 4, 2014 22:07
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FISHMANPET posted:So cruising around Zillow, I found a house that looks like it's 1 story. Look at the pictures, and it's actually got a pretty sizeable attic, as well as a finished basement. Zillow lists it as 2 stories, as pulled from county property tax records. Trulia lists at as 1 story, also from property tax records. Redfin doesn't tell, presumably because Redfin thinks it's not actually for sale. Realtor.com lists it as both 2 stories from public records, and 1.5 stories, presumably from MLS data. A local realtor's website lists it as 1.5 stories, presumably also from MLS data. It appears that the house has had a pending offer since March 11th (which Redfin, Realtor.com, and local site agree on, Trulia just says it's off the market) so in this case Zillow is just wrong. what is 1.5 stories? Bonus room above the garage kind of deal?
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Apr 4, 2014 22:45
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Yeah, or split level, or a partial story.
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Apr 4, 2014 22:47
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I've seen it to commonly refer to a room in the attic. This is the particular house in question: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2314-E-37th-St-Minneapolis-MN-55406/1695356_zpid/ From the front it looks like a 1 story house, but there's a full room inside the dormers of the room, so that's the half story.
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Apr 4, 2014 22:58
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FISHMANPET posted:Redfin doesn't tell, presumably because Redfin thinks it's not actually for sale. Redfin's listing page, just below the photo and listing remarks posted:Style: Single Family 1 1/2 Stories Admittedly, I had to stare a while to find it.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:11
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Weird, maybe you have to be logged in to see that? For me it just saysquote:Style Single Family Residential
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Apr 4, 2014 23:14
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bartkusa posted:It could be done, but few people use advanced search filters. I think it's a combination of not-good-enough UI, and people being afraid of missing their dream house because they ticked a checkbox. Also realtors are loving idiots when they list on MLS. The agent selling the house we bought forgot to note that it has central AC, a pretty big feature in our price range in the Portland area. I wouldn't trust the MLS listing very far beyond price, approximate square footage, bed and bathroom count.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:16
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FISHMANPET posted:Weird, maybe you have to be logged in to see that? For me it just says Some MLSes require that pending listings can't be shown to consumers. I can see it because I am an admin.  Economic Sinkhole posted:Also realtors are loving idiots when they list on MLS. The agent selling the house we bought forgot to note that it has central AC, a pretty big feature in our price range in the Portland area. I wouldn't trust the MLS listing very far beyond price, approximate square footage, bed and bathroom count. Sellers may lie. Agents may make typos or omit details. County records might be stale and out-of-date. There is no reliable data source except seeing the home yourself.  Leperflesh, posting below posted:That's an interesting analysis. Did the analyst normalize the data based on when advanced search features were added, though? E.g., if the "new construction" option was added at a later date, then searches before that date couldn't have used it, so it'll be an artificially low number. I don't know, sorry. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv bartkusa fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Apr 4, 2014 |
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Apr 4, 2014 23:24
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bartkusa posted:It could be done, but few people use advanced search filters. I think it's a combination of not-good-enough UI, and people being afraid of missing their dream house because they ticked a checkbox. That's an interesting analysis. Did the analyst normalize the data based on when advanced search features were added, though? E.g., if the "new construction" option was added at a later date, then searches before that date couldn't have used it, so it'll be an artificially low number. Not that I'd dispute the general conclusion, mind you. Most people don't use advanced features of any software application.
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Apr 4, 2014 23:26
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Kill me. The very day I got on-contract to buy, my bank ordered an appraisal. It was done the next day. I just got the report, and they valued the house at $5000 under our agreed price. Both agents were shocked. We thought we were getting a pretty good deal. The appraiser had comps scattered all over the place, and in looking at the comps ourselves, we can't see how the hell he came up with his valuation. His comps were all roughly .8 miles away and there were even some overpriced active listings thrown in there. The listing agent gave him a call to ask him to clarify his valuation, and the appraiser seemed surprised to learn from the listing agent that the house was a purchase rather than a refi. That of course gives our agents grounds to appeal, because obviously this halfwit didn't have the good sense to even read the loving purchase contract. My agent is convinced that his gently caress-up is the reason why it's so low, and that it should reappraise for our purchase price or higher. My biggest question is, is a refi appraisal really that different from a purchase?
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Apr 5, 2014 05:29
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Cenodoxus posted:My agent is convinced that his gently caress-up is the reason why it's so low, and that it should reappraise for our purchase price or higher. My biggest question is, is a refi appraisal really that different from a purchase? The only real difference is the appraiser completes the purchase contract subsection on page 1 which is basically just stating the date of contract, purchase price, seller concessions, and any other unusual terms of the contract. On its own there's not really a significant justification to adjust the value due to correcting the purpose type from refi to purchase.
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Apr 5, 2014 05:53
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Captain Windex posted:The only real difference is the appraiser completes the purchase contract subsection on page 1 which is basically just stating the date of contract, purchase price, seller concessions, and any other unusual terms of the contract. On its own there's not really a significant justification to adjust the value due to correcting the purpose type from refi to purchase. Yes, but an arms length agreed upon price does set a pretty strong data point for actual fair market value.
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Apr 5, 2014 15:14
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Perhaps, but from the lender's perspective they've already taken that into account as the loan to value is calculated using the lesser of the appraised value or the purchase price. In the appraisal they want to know what other people in the market are willing to pay for a similar property, they already know what the buyer and seller are willing to pay. Whether this ends up being an issue depends on the lender, some will take issue if the appraiser fixes the purpose on the report and it magically bumps up $5k in value with no other justification and others won't. Appraisals are one of the only parts of the lending process that are subjective so there can be a lot of wiggle room to let poo poo go if it's otherwise a strong borrower/good customer/low risk loan.
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Apr 5, 2014 19:55
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it's more of an argument against the attention to detail of the appraiser, and his general competence level.
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Apr 5, 2014 23:04
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Allow me to reiterate how much I hate having to pay several hundred dollars for the appraisal. You can see how much expertise and effort goes into one.
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Apr 6, 2014 01:30
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The listing agent fought the appraiser and apparently won. She sent an appeal to the bank this morning and this evening I found an appraisal PDF in my email showing $3000 more. There were no new comps and no additional adjustments between the two reports.  I don't think it was due to any direct action on the part of the listing agent, considering all her comps for the appeal were arguably some of the most incomparable listings in the area. $50-100k more, 400 bedrooms, 18 car garage, hookers and blow in the rec room, etc. I think the appraiser manually updated his valuation after realizing it was in fact a purchase and not a refi. We were questioning whether the sellers would budge a whole $5000, but we're a bit more confident that we can reach an agreement now that the gap has closed to $2000 and the sellers themselves are on contract for another house. I'm another step closer to the biggest 
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Apr 8, 2014 03:19
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Jumped back into the fold and made an offer after over a year off ( market driven too high for me and couldn't deal with the bidding/ cash wars back then). My offer was just one of 18. Can never buy.
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Apr 8, 2014 04:24
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Lixer posted:Jumped back into the fold and made an offer after over a year off ( market driven too high for me and couldn't deal with the bidding/ cash wars back then). Tell me about it. Prices around me are stupid. I have no idea who is paying these prices. My wife and I have a household income of around a $100k. I figure we can comfortably afford up to $230k without getting into house-poor territory. I routinely see places go for $300k, $400k, or $500k around me. I just can't fathom that there are THAT many rich folks buying these homes. It seems like its all retiring baby boomers buying "investment" properties or financially irresponsible 20 and 30-somethings that are paying way too much.
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Apr 8, 2014 21:57
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LogisticEarth posted:Tell me about it. Prices around me are stupid. I have no idea who is paying these prices. My wife and I have a household income of around a $100k. I figure we can comfortably afford up to $230k without getting into house-poor territory. I routinely see places go for $300k, $400k, or $500k around me. I just can't fathom that there are THAT many rich folks buying these homes. http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml Enter the zip code you are looking in to see how your household income compares to the average and how much of each of their incomes others are spending on housing.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:09
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My theory is that there's a major shortage of housing, which was caused by and also disguised by the '07/'08 mortgage crisis and recession. Take a look at the unemployment numbers for construction. It's still one of the highest rates across all sectors, beaten only by agriculture, and a year ago it was the very worst. That's a sign that even in March 2013, a ton of people who used to be employed doing construction work haven't had work recently, and home construction is a big part of that number. When the mortgage crisis happened and housing prices dropped due to A) the market being flooded with foreclosures and B) unemployment driving down demand, all those newly-evicted people crammed into the rental market, which is why rents skyrocketed. But at the same time, new housing starts plunged to almost zero, and stayed there for three or four years. The artificial abundance of homes available for sale, combined with the inability of current-owners to sell (because of being underwater) and new-home buyers being scared out of the market, you had a five-year period in which basically no houses got built. But during that period, we had normal population growth. So now, even though new housing starts have somewhat recovered, there's still a shortage. And with unemployment getting back down to pre-recession levels, interest rates remaining extremely low, and people starting to So that's driving prices up, especially in markets where there's still a functional upper-middle-class economy, like here in the San Francisco Bay Area. People tightened their belts during the recession and saved, people have jobs now, people want houses, and there's not enough to go around. That's why I was interested in Nebby's sense that prices may crash again... around here, I'm not sure why they would. Especially on the Peninsula, where most of the undeveloped land is protected from development; the only way to create new housing is by increasing density, and that is much more legally complex and expensive than just plonking down a new cookie-cutter development on vacant (or more commonly, former agricultural) land. LogisticEarth posted:It seems like its all retiring baby boomers buying "investment" properties or financially irresponsible 20 and 30-somethings that are paying way too much. That's certainly possible too, of course. A lot of buyers are probably assuming that 1) prices will go up even more, and 2) interest rates will go up soon. They want to lock in a good rate now instead of waiting. There may also be a segment of investors seeking something with better returns than bonds (which everyone seems afraid of these days anyway), but worried that stocks are overbought and the stock market is due for a significant correction (which I agree with completely). Real estate is an obvious place to look for that kind of investor. The smart money got in two years ago, of course, buying at the bottom... but there's often a lot of stupid money chasing the smart money, so maybe that's part of what's going on now too.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:22
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There's a ton of private equity firms and individual investors buying up houses right now. That's where a lot of these insane all-cash, no-inspection, no-contingencies practically sight-unseen purchases are coming from, at least in my area. It makes it practically impossible for a "normal" person to compete. My landlord is a partner in a small company that does this for houses and condos and then either rents them out or fixes them up and resells them. When you have connections to your own contractors for cheap and do in-house property management then it becomes feasible. They're relatively small-time compared to some bigger firms doing the same thing. I've talked to him at length about it and the market and general and it's insane the portion of the housing market transactions that are investors and not owner-occupiers right now. Ironically, he is having a difficult time buying a personal house for himself because of the influence his type of business is having on the market. Guinness fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 8, 2014 22:27
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I don't think it's actually impossible; what is required is to make an even higher offer. If a seller would accept a cash offer 15% lower than the best noncash offer, then you have to offer even more. Or, if you can't make a higher offer, buy less house. That may mean a crappier house, a lovely neighborhood, or a longer commute (or all three). Essentially, the market is telling you that you have overestimated how much house you can afford at today's prices, given the prevalence and attractiveness of all-cash offers. I think what throws people is that bidding wars show that the asking prices on the market are much lower than the actual prices the market will bear. That makes the prices seem "insane." But prices can go up, sometimes by a lot, sometimes in a very short time period. Residential real estate has become a pretty volatile market in the last decade. It's forgivable to think that when prices jump (say) 30% in nine months, they've risen too high and are unsustainable. But that's not necessarily the case, and there are other asset classes where that kind of volatility is considered normal. There is a good argument to be made that borrowers are at too much of a disadvantage compared to cash offers; but that's due to excessive complexity and risk for mortgage-based offers. If we assumed regulation and the marketplace operated efficiently, all those banks losing out on potential mortgages due to not being competitive with cash should apply pressure to become more efficient/reliable/whatever and gradually improve the situation. But LOL at that, obviously it's a badly entrenched system that has too many interdependent actors and complicated pieces.
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Apr 8, 2014 22:52
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It's not even the all-cash aspect of it, though that certainly is a piece of it. It's the fact that traditional inspections and contingencies have basically gone out the window in some markets. That's a lot of risk for a buyer that isn't investor backed with a dozen contractor buddies on speed dial. You have to bring an inspector with you to the day 1 open house and hope that they catch anything.
Guinness fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 8, 2014 22:57
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in my limited experience so far in the bay area having a no-contingency contract is a given. however the house we lost on went for 20% over listing price to a financed buyer (not all cash.) i'm not sure we are competing with investors as much anymore, our realtor says its mostly individuals and that jives with this info here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-01/buy-rent-officially-dead-california so far though all the houses we've looked at have already had inspections done by the seller, so we're not flying completely blind. i haven't been disappointed with the depth of the disclosures/inspections/etc provided by the seller, but who knows.
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Apr 8, 2014 23:07
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LogisticEarth posted:Tell me about it. Prices around me are stupid. I have no idea who is paying these prices. My wife and I have a household income of around a $100k. I figure we can comfortably afford up to $230k without getting into house-poor territory. I routinely see places go for $300k, $400k, or $500k around me. I just can't fathom that there are THAT many rich folks buying these homes.
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Apr 8, 2014 23:32
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necrobobsledder posted:In the DC area, you have a generally older population that's fiscally conservative compared to the rest of the country. Both income and investable assets are rivaling New York City, plus there's a metric ton of rich foreigners with ties to the capital of the developed world economy. Most of the houses where I am are not bought by investors and are all-cash and median is about $750k for a home. When it's pretty typical for a middle class household to hit $200k / yr what do you expect? Well for one, I'm not in DC, I'm outside of Philly. Our household income is a good $30k above the area median. Here's an anecdote of the housing market near me: On the corner of my block, there was a house that was foreclosed on back in 2008. The bank let it rot for about four or five years. They finally sold it last year to a developer. It was sold for $200,000, with trees growing out of the roof. They knocked it down, keeping the foundation. They now have built a cheapo construction McMansion on top of the foundation, and are listing it for $580,000. This is happening to several properties in town. Affordable, structurally solid "fixer uppers" are being sold, gutted and/or knocked down, and faux-luxury properties are popping up in their place. I kinda just want to stay in my 1 bedroom apartment with my wife and just keep socking away money. But at the same time I'm loving tired of smelling my upstairs neighbor's pot and cigarette smoke wafting through the vents, and hearing my downstairs neighbor's goofy-sounding orgasms.
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Apr 9, 2014 01:09
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I can lock at 4.5% if I pay a 1% of loan amount origination fee, or at 4.625% with no origination fee. I calculate it will take on order of 7-8 years to break even on the extra ~$1300 I'd be spending on the loan origination fee. So far I've been of the "get the lowest rate possible period" school but... yeah. Thoughts?
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Apr 9, 2014 01:13
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