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I assume the algorithm also takes the most recent sale into consideration and its sale price relative to its comps. So those unique things that don't show up in the stats might end up being included in the estimate simply because the last time it sold, it sold for $100k over the estimate. At least that's how I would design the algorithm. But I'm just a
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Feb 17, 2024 02:06
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There's a house in my neighborhood that, back in January, listed for $400k above what everyone thinks similar houses are worth. It was a flip, bought for $900k mid-2023, in rather dire condition. It spent two weeks on the market, and then they took the listing down, probably because nobody was willing to drop that much cash on a "starter home". I'm really hoping that they do still sell for substantially above market rates, because that'd give a boost to my own house's nominal value when I (or rather, my agent) list in a month or so.
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Feb 17, 2024 02:33
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This is kind of a weird question. My uncle died last year and owned some property in a nearby city that's on the edge of gentrifying. The property needs a lot of work, but my aunt is up for selling it to my wife and I in a direct sale so we wouldn't have to deal with realtors taking their chunk out of either end. However, she doesn't want to do any work or pay any money to make that happen (which is more than fair). How does one go about getting an independent property assessment so we can make her a reasonable offer for what the property's worth, especially with all the repairs and missed upkeep that'll need to happen?
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Feb 20, 2024 22:11
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Find a real estate attorney. You won't want to navigate this process without expert help.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:17
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You hire a real estate attorney.
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Feb 20, 2024 22:17
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I'm in the middle of packing up and moving out of my old house -- like, literally, as I type this, I'm surrounded by all of my belongings in boxes, which will be loaded onto a truck tomorrow. The agent that's helping me sell this house works for Compass, and was really gung-ho on their "Concierge" system, which is basically a zero-interest loan you take against the sale value of the house, which can be used for improvements, moving costs, etc. You get an associated debit card that can draw against the loan. We have a contractor lined up to do stuff like paint the house, fix the drywall, repair some other miscellaneous damage, etc. and this is how that guy's supposed to get paid. Problem #1: there's a $750 loan origination fee. I contact the agent and say "yo wtf, you did not mention this", he says "oh yeah, they added that this year"...and you couldn't have thought to warn me? I have other sources of funds I could have leaned on with a bit more advance notice. I tell him this, he offers to take the $750 off of his fee (it'll show as a credit on the house sale), OK fine, I take out the loan Problem #2: he asks for the card info! So on the one hand, I can see how this could make both of our lives easier, in that he can make purchases on my behalf (e.g. to replace the boob light I couldn't be bothered getting rid of when I bought the house, as well as a new vanity to replace a lovely old one). On the other hand, a) I needed to know this in advance, because the loan agreement had a big section on delegating control to others which I ignored as irrelevant, and b) it's real bad practice to just hand over control of a tens-of-thousands-of-dollars account to someone else with no oversight controls. What I do remember about that loan agreement basically said "if you let other people access the card, then anything they buy is on you, lol". IMO the way this should have worked is that the agent personally pays for intermediary expenses, and presents me with a consolidated bill at the end. Which doesn't seem to be an option in this case. I'm just so drat peeved about this. The agent's job is to simplify a very stressful process, not to spring surprise bullshit on you at the last minute. And I can't exactly fire this guy in the middle of everything.
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Feb 21, 2024 04:10
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The agents job is to extract 2.5% of your houses value for as little work as possible, list it on Zillow and wait for the phone to ring They have zero incentive to help you finance your move in fact they probably hate that program because it means they might have to talk to you on the phone more than twice The agent is not your friend or helper. Not sure where you got this idea from
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Feb 21, 2024 08:51
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm just so drat peeved about this. The agent's job is to simplify a very stressful process, not to spring surprise bullshit on you at the last minute. lol lmao
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Feb 21, 2024 08:57
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hard no on giving them the card info holy poo poo. That's not even a question. Like the best case bad thing that can happen with that is they spend $10k doing some renovation to make the house sell without asking you. The worst case is really loving bad and ranges from outright theft on their part on through their dumbshit nephew finding the info on their desktop and going on a shopping trip.
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Feb 21, 2024 14:55
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm in the middle of packing up and moving out of my old house -- like, literally, as I type this, I'm surrounded by all of my belongings in boxes, which will be loaded onto a truck tomorrow. The agent that's helping me sell this house works for Compass, and was really gung-ho on their "Concierge" system, which is basically a zero-interest loan you take against the sale value of the house, which can be used for improvements, moving costs, etc. You get an associated debit card that can draw against the loan. We have a contractor lined up to do stuff like paint the house, fix the drywall, repair some other miscellaneous damage, etc. and this is how that guy's supposed to get paid. If you give him the card number, he's going to charge every single tiny little thing that he would normally just cover himself as part of his listing fee to that card. You'll be paying for the cookies at the open house. To your last point: I found the internal pitch deck for an early version of the program and one of the "benefits" that they highlight is that it more closely ties, the seller to the agent. If he turns out to be an incompetent moron you have to pony up five figures worth of money to fire him since the loan comes due immediately, of course he was gung ho about it.
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Feb 21, 2024 14:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The agent's job is to simplify a very stressful process, not to spring surprise bullshit on you at the last minute. And I can't exactly fire this guy in the middle of everything. This is where you went very, very wrong. The agent is barely aligned with your objectives. In this case this manifests as: - The agent makes money on selling things as quickly and easily as possible at any price. A small increase in price is negligible to their commission and therefore not worth dealying or potentially losing a sale over. They will sell your house at any price they are sure someone will pay unless you stop them from doing so. - In order to minimize time on the market they will use any money you can hand them to make the house as saleable as possible as quickly as possible, with zero consideration for cost because it's not a cost they are bearing. - They are already slipping in fees and backing off when caught. Do you really think you can trust this person? Don't give anyone the card details. Don't use any of their contractors: find your own. Don't let your real estate agent dictate what needs to be done: take them as suggestions and compare it to how hot your market is. Unless something is broken don't replace it. Unless the paint is totally screwed don't repaint: there is usually no reason and the new owners are going to want to paint and/or replace appliances ro remodel later. Do no replace cheap light fixtures just because: your taste will not be thre new owner's taste. If it works leave it.
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Feb 21, 2024 15:07
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Motronic posted:Unless something is broken don't replace it. Unless the paint is totally screwed don't repaint: there is usually no reason and the new owners are going to want to paint and/or replace appliances ro remodel later. Do no replace cheap light fixtures just because: your taste will not be thre new owner's taste. If it works leave it. The caveat I'm going to put on this is that it is very market dependent. If you live in a hot market Motronic's absolutely right and all that poo poo doesn't even matter in the slightest. But if you live in a more normal or even depressed market some people 100% are going to be turned off by dingy paint or that hosed up piece of wall trim where your kid spent 45 minutes slamming a toy bulldozer into it. Is it dumb? Yes, but some buyers are dumb and some dumb buyers have money enough to buy houses. The shortcut to this is to ask your realtor how the local market is, but of course that can lead to dumb poo poo where they get you to update stuff that doesn't need updating because they close a few weeks earlier. The long way to do it is to go look at a bunch of local open houses yourself and keep track of how long they take to move. Did the one with the hosed up tile in the kitchen take a few months and the one with the fresh coat of rental-grade grey on every wall went in a week? Might be a data point to ponder on when looking at your own place.
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Feb 21, 2024 15:12
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As long as houses are moving relatively quickly in your area turning off the people who can't overlook a scuffed wall or boob light might be a nice filter since those people are highly likely to be unreasonable pains in the rear end when an inspection report comes back.
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Feb 21, 2024 15:27
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Why is a realtor handling repairs and stuff anyway? Like I would expect they would have some input on easy things to do to give it some shine, that's normal, but they really shouldn't be acting as a GC. Outside of maybe something like "I can rent some staging furniture" if you really, really need to there really aren't any costs that should be going through the realtor. Realtors work by referral and my experience with them is not nearly as bleak as this thread portrays, but also there's no reason to give them a literal blank check.
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Feb 21, 2024 15:36
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Like almost everything, it's market and situation dependent. Our agent acted as our intermediary because we were out of state and obviously we wanted to spend as little time as possible waiting around our old house for contractors so our agent did that for us instead. She gave us a list of specialty l contractors she recommended for various things, we cross-referenced them and signed off on the ones we preferred. I think the office actually had a general contractor on retainer for smaller things like painting and cosmetic repairs.
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Feb 21, 2024 16:27
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Giving recommendations is normal, but I am assuming she didn't pay them out of a budget herself or anything, right? And yeah I guess a handyman to come and fix scuffed trim and unclog drains isn't super unusual either, but by the sound of it OP was talking about a much bigger thing.
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Feb 21, 2024 16:45
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I learned this the hard way when I sold my house in Houston years ago, the listing agent said to me "you need to go get the foundation repair warranty transferred, go talk to the foundation company to move it". Little did I know that the foundation company had told the PO that the foundation was poo poo and needed $40k worth of work to repair it so the PO sold the house to me instead and didn't disclose it. Lost so much money on that drat house. luckily the agent lost money too. Yes, I could have sued the PO for non-disclosure, but I would have lost even more money. I just sold it as is and took the hit.
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Feb 21, 2024 17:20
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How did the agent lose money?
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Feb 21, 2024 17:47
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House sold at a drastically lower price
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Feb 21, 2024 17:57
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Yes, I'm sure they were very hurt by the ~$1000 or so less they saw in commission (you understand most agents see sub 2%. Some or sometimes most of that commission is absorbed by their agency or even direct manager/team lead).
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Feb 21, 2024 18:04
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oh, you mean the agent made less money they make it up in volume, op
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Feb 21, 2024 18:06
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Lockback posted:Why is a realtor handling repairs and stuff anyway? Like I would expect they would have some input on easy things to do to give it some shine, that's normal, but they really shouldn't be acting as a GC. Compass has kind of pioneered the idea of, and this is extremely specific to the pants-on-head-crazy San Francisco market, the idea that they will take your listing, repaint it, replace the kitchen appliances, "remodel" (replace the mirror and maybe some of the light fixtures) the bathrooms, PLUS bring in a short listed staging company and rent the furniture All this comes out of a free 0% interest loan from compass for the first ~60 days. In San Francisco pre pandemic or was a great deal, it added about $25k to the cost of the transaction but on a $1.2mm property was approaching a rounding error, and virtually guaranteed a bidding war on a "ready to move in" house or condo* Sounds like they're expanding the program outside of northern California, but it's not as finely polished. I'd probably consider compass to list my house here in the bay area, but anywhere else, probably not. I forget but I think they just recently went public *We bought our first home/condo from a compass agent
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Feb 21, 2024 19:49
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Oh weird. I guess that makes a kind of sense but I could see that as a potential disaster in other geographies.
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Feb 21, 2024 19:55
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Lockback posted:Oh weird. I guess that makes a kind of sense but I could see that as a potential disaster in other geographies. It's a potential disaster in every geography. It's just stacking even more perverse incentives that aren't aligned with you as a seller into this transaction. I suppose some people value time/simplicity more than money. And if that's you then this is the service for you.
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Feb 21, 2024 19:58
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Interesting. Yeah, at this point I'm basically waiting on mortgage rates to drop down below 6% to start shopping for a new home, and a service like that would in theory be great for helping sell the old home and it's fifteen years of a wear and tear . . . But 25k is a lot more than a rounding error on house prices where I am!
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Feb 21, 2024 20:00
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The only reason it worked in San Francisco is, guessing, the market is just absolutely white hot, and the top tier agents were offering that service and consistently getting bidding wars, so other agents started offering it until it became the norm here. Compass just weaponized/institutionalized it. Compass is/was like 35% of all SF listings when we bought our place. As a buyer it was a very stark difference between a fully updated/staged house, and a seller who was clearly trying to save money/nickel and dime every last dollar on the $1 million dollar house they had bought 25 years ago for $180,000. Floors were dirty and unpolished, window screens with holes and tears in them, lovely 20 year old paint in every room, loose hardware on the kitchen cabinets, and no fridge because, well, you're buying a house, I'm taking my $200 15 year old fridge with me, gently caress you Vs the 25 other houses you saw with fresh paint, new west elm kitchen hardware, a brand new sub zero fridge, brand new bosh kitchen appliances and updated bathrooms? I can tell you which homes we spent the most time touring and which ones my wife walked right out of Our condo didn't come with the sub zero fridge but virtually every other house we looked at did
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Feb 21, 2024 21:08
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Yeah, doing the cosmetic facelift stuff is almost always worthwhile even if new owners will want to paint and such anyway. The small ways that influences someone looking to buy is invaluable.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:10
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I used the Compass concierge program back in 2020 when I was selling a house in a trust where I was a co-executor and it worked out well in those very specific circumstances where there was stuff that needed to be paid for and I didn't want to cover it myself and reimburse myself later. Having said that if there was a $750 fee at that time I would have bit the bullet on dealing with the reimbursement myself. I also never gave the card number to the agent nor would I have if they asked.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:15
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Lockback posted:Yeah, doing the cosmetic facelift stuff is almost always worthwhile even if new owners will want to paint and such anyway. The small ways that influences someone looking to buy is invaluable. So what's the best way to do that stuff if you don't use a service? In our current place the carpet is utterly shot (like, held down with duct tape in places), the appliances are aging, etc. - it's a roughly twenty year old house. In theory I'd like to get a new place, renovate it like we will want (appliances, hardwood floors, etc), move in, then renovate the old, then sell it, but I'm not sure what the best way is to do that logistically and financially.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:26
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A bridge loan can help you buy a new place without selling the old one first. Dunno if those extend to covering renovations, on either property.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:33
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I've not personally had to get a bridge loan, yet, but I'm pretty sure minor renovations are specifically allowed as one of the primary purposes. A quick Google search shows that there's even a category of bridge loans that can be used for new home construction.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:46
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Motronic posted:This is where you went very, very wrong. The agent is barely aligned with your objectives. In this case this manifests as: I'm just gonna pop in to point out my experience selling with Redfin so far has been awesome and I think their model ameliorates a lot of the perverse incentives that motivate traditional realtors. The most critical thing is their agents compensation is primarily salary based, and from what I understand their performance evaluations are primarily based on customer satisfaction. I think this has benefited us in a few ways: A) He actually recommended we list our home higher than the traditional realtors we met with. I don't put a ton of weight into this, maybe he just wanted to charm us into using him by throwing out some big numbers, but it has worked out great. We went under contact in a few days and even had a little two-way bidding war and our current contract buy price is for over asking. B) The current contract came at us with a ridiculous array of inspection objections. They proposed we could replace a number of old but perfectly functioning utilities, or reduce our sale price by 20k. It was clearly ridiculous, but it would have been super easy for our realtor to ask us to just give up 5k or whatever to placate them and move things along. Instead, he suggested we go back to market, which I was down for. It would have been a bummer, but their inspection objection was so clearly a cash grab I was ready to walk on principle. I was pleased my realtor was the one to suggest this, though. It's would be more work for him, but it was definitely a suggestion I think made with our best financial interest in mind. What ended up happening was he called up another buyer that was willing to put in a back up offer. So we get the backup in, he brings that to our current buyer and tell them gently caress you, we're not doing anything, you can walk if you want. Sure enough, they withdraw all objections and we're still on track to sell at above asking price. Was this some act of extraordinary effort? No, it was a few phone calls and a couple signatures. But the MAJORITY of realtors, I believe, would have prodded us to give something up to keep the deal alive. No realtor wants to go through the trouble of going back on the market and fielding more offers. Meanwhile, I'm saving at least 1% in commission, and another .5% if I buy with them on the other side. Obviously, there's a ways to go, we don't close for two weeks, but so far I couldn't be happier. I think this salary-based model, especially with the recent lawsuits, is 100% the future of this industry.
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Feb 21, 2024 21:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:So what's the best way to do that stuff if you don't use a service? Carpet can be replaced pretty easily and quickly by an experienced crew. You gotta clear out rooms but that's not really a hugely onerous thing to do. When I had my floors done I moved the stuff myself but you can get help with that. I generally wouldn't suggest getting new appliances for a house being sold unless you are in particularly hot market and counting on getting as many people in a bidding war as you can. Painting, fixing trim, replacing interior doors, etc can all be done while you live there. It's annoying and if you have a family with kids there might be some "Go to grandma's for the weekend" or even "1 parent take the kids to a hotel while the other spends the weekend doing the jobs" but it's almost certainly worth it. None of that stuff is very technical to do, it just takes some time and is tedious. Far less work than trying to float 2 homes AND do all that work. You can also find local handymen to do a lot of that stuff too, it's not as cheap as it once was but if there's small jobs that you just don't have the skill for you can group em up and spend a couple hundred bucks to get them knocked out. Things like replacing hardware or even basic plumbing like replacing faucets and such is really really easy to do yourself though. I think a lot of that stuff people build up in their heads like it's going to be a big ordeal when it's really not. If you're talking about gutting a place or doing more involved renovation that's a lot harder to do but I would guess its outside of these services anyway. As mentioned, there are some ways to get bridge loans for that but again, I'd be careful about if it really is the right thing to do or not. I think people tend to overvalue how much a renovation will impact sale price and it's easy to end up spending more than you get in difference. I tend to believe in renovate right after you buy, instead of right before you sell. Enjoy what you do. Lockback fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 21:55
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hobbez posted:I'm just gonna pop in to point out my experience selling with Redfin so far has been awesome and ..., but so far I couldn't be happier. I think this salary-based model, especially with the recent lawsuits, is 100% the future of this industry. I think it's gonna take 20 years, and real estate associations will try and pass protectionist laws in the interim, but I 100% agree
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Feb 21, 2024 22:17
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Quick sanity check here: home warranties are mostly a scam, right? Let me know if there are any scenarios in which they make sense I’m not considering. As always, everyone in this process has their hand out and it’s easy to assume it’s all marketing. Thanks in advance.
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Feb 22, 2024 11:17
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Mushroom Zingdom posted:Quick sanity check here: home warranties are mostly a scam, right? Let me know if there are any scenarios in which they make sense I’m not considering. As always, everyone in this process has their hand out and it’s easy to assume it’s all marketing. Thanks in advance. If you're buying an older house with older appliances that needs a lot of maintenance and may soon need major replacements.
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Feb 22, 2024 12:37
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Even then I've found that the companies that home warranties hire are completely poo poo and will further try to scam you out of more money. My opinion is to just avoid them.
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Feb 22, 2024 14:16
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It's also pretty much a guarantee that the replacement units they give you will be the lowest tier of rental grade bullshit.
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Feb 22, 2024 14:31
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Mushroom Zingdom posted:Quick sanity check here: home warranties are mostly a scam, right? Let me know if there are any scenarios in which they make sense I’m not considering. As always, everyone in this process has their hand out, and it’s easy to assume it’s all marketing. Thanks in advance. You should absolutely be skeptical of any 3rd party warranty you are pitched, ever. They are almost always pure profit for the warranty company. As is the custom in my market, my current house purchase included a "seller-paid" 1yr warranty. The water heater crapped out in the warranty period. Ol Slap might finally win one against the warranty companies? No. They agreed that the heater itself, removal, and installation were all covered. But there were uncovered "modifications" I'd have to pay for out of pocket to the tune of $1200. Which is totally coincidentally about what my regular plumber would charge to replace a heater with a middle of the road unit. I declined and fixed it myself for $200.
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Feb 22, 2024 15:26
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If a seller if throwing in a home warranty as part of the sale then that's cool, I had a friend who ended up with a free furnace out of that deal, and I personally saved about $800 on a furnace repair with mine. The odds are more likely that you'll get nothing out of it though or the servicer will make it as difficult as possibly to use the benefit. It is not something I'd ever choose to pay for myself.
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Feb 22, 2024 15:33
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