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I ran across an interesting listing today - the house is not formally for sale yet but appeared in the property ads anyway because the bank had posted a notice of intent to foreclose. The location is very appealing to me, the estimated price was well within my range (no asking price was available since it's not for sale), and while I couldn't get closer than about 400 feet to the place without crossing property lines the parts I could see looked fine and the neighborhood overall seemed decent. My position right now is that I'd be interested in doing a walk-thru if the owner would entertain the idea of selling the place. A bit of Googling revealed that in these situations both the bank and the owner could be motivated to sell since it'd save them both the cost and troubles associated with going through a foreclosure proceeding. On the other hand they might be trying to work out some other payment deal and not want to sell at all which would be fine too. So how do I best go about contacting them to see where they stand? Cold calling the owner myself seems like a terrible idea, should I try to find an agent and have them initiate contact after discussing the situation with them? Are there any other special considerations or legal issues to keep in mind for a pre-foreclosure property?
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Dec 23, 2013 01:14
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:21 |
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Since the subject has come up, does anyone have advice regarding how to pick a good real estate lawyer? I found a place I'm interested in just by cruising around in a neighborhood I like and spotting a "For Sale" sign outside of a place that looked decent. I did a brief walk-thru and everything looks basically OK, but before going any further it'd be nice to have some legal supervision from someone who isn't the seller's agent. Google reveals plenty of local law firms that advertise real estate specialists but I have no idea as to how to evaluate them beyond that.
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Sep 10, 2014 01:17
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Leperflesh posted:Dunno about your lawyer question (because I didn't use one), but can I interject to say for god's sake look at more than one house before putting in a bid? No worries there, I've looked at a bunch of places and just omitted mentioning them because I didn't think they would be relevant to the question I was asking.  Given the amount of info online these days I prefer to do my own searching around on the big real estate websites, then do my own drive-by to see if they look decent in person, and only then do I contact a realtor to do a walk-thru. The upside to this method is that I can take my time and wait for something I genuinely like to come along (I'm in no hurry to buy), the downside is that when I find something I don't have a non-conflicted expert on my side since the seller's agent is acting for both sides. That's where the real estate lawyer comes in. This is the first place that has survived through the walk-thru stage without getting dumped in the pile of "nope" houses, so it's time to start looking for legal help.
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Sep 10, 2014 04:14
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I don't have any realtor friends, but I do have an uncle who is an architect and has done some appraisal/home inspection work in the past. He also lives an easy drive away and has been amazingly helpful with looking over the house I'm mulling over buying. The place is in one of my favorite neighborhoods, close to work and downtown, but still established enough to have large trees and a couple of very nice parks. The house is located on a wooded double lot and seems to be in very good shape mechanically, including a major renovation in 2006 that brought everything up to modern codes and added a new metal roof. The catch is that the previous owner considered herself to be an interior designer/artist and remodeled the inside of this nice traditional home with a lot of "avant-garde" bullshit. There are some odd free-standing wall segments that don't seem to have any functional purpose, the master bathroom is fitted out in an "industrial" style that includes bare concrete cinderblock and sheet metal accents with industrial safety lights, I *think* the idea in the kitchen is that you're supposed to put your food and dishes in some wicker baskets and then hang them on the wall but who knows, and the garage is painted neon green. Anyway, Architect Uncle took a look at it and assured me that most of the ugly parts could be solved with paint and/or some light demo work and the essentials of the place are in good shape. I'm thinking about making an offer 15-20% below their asking price since it's been sitting on the market for a few months in an otherwise desirable area, and if they accept I'll move in with a sledgehammer in tow and try to de-uglify it over the next few years.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:42
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Antifreeze Head posted:I'm less than half way though the house and have barely touched the yard, but shipped out 11,000 pounds of garbage in my first month. Holy crap, I hope mine doesn't involve quite that much cleanup. Good luck with the rest of it! Anyway, this train is getting ready to leave the station. I took a few hours off work today to make calls and get some estimates and set up a meeting with a real estate lawyer to help draft an offer. The only unusual thing that has popped up is that the home is included in an Historical Neighborhood Preservation District so I need to find out what that means, if anything. Given that the previous owner did some pretty extensive renovation and painted the garage lime green I'm guessing that it has no really strong enforcement policy behind it but better to find out now than later. I'm guessing there's at least a 50% chance the owner rejects my lowball offer but if they don't there's gonna be a lot of paperwork and check writing in my near future.
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Sep 23, 2014 22:21
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It seems like everything checks out on the home I've been looking at and I'm starting to read up on making an offer. The realtor is taking off for a few days of previously-announced vacation time so I'm going to wait until he's back to formally pull the trigger. In the meantime I made up a list of contingencies I want to see in the offer letter, am I missing anything big here? home inspection able to secure finance able to secure insurance final walk-thru - demonstration of working HVAC, water, electric, kitchen appliances title clearance earnest money amount? appraisal closure/possession dates kitchen appliances, hot water heater included & in working order settlement location @ my lawyer's office prorate property taxes to possession date get radon test wood destroying organisms (termite) inspection
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Sep 30, 2014 00:50
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Tomorrow is D-Day for putting in an offer on the place I've been checking out for the last month. The owner wants $225k but everything I've seen (comparable homes nearby, current tax assessment, advice from an uncle who has done appraisal work in the past) suggests that $190k is a more realistic price. It's been on the market for about four months despite being in a very desirable neighborhood and they've dropped the price by $10k once already so hopefully reality has sunk in a bit and they'll entertain the lower offer. I'm fairly certain I'll be the first offer they've gotten in that time and since I've done all my prep/research already I can also give them a pretty easy no-hassle sale if they just want to get out of the place. Option B is that they get angry over being confronted with the fact that they aren't going to get their full 2006 buying price out of the thing and they tell me to go to hell. That's fine too, my apartment is comfortable and month-to-month so I'm in no rush. e: I also lived in Dane Co. for 16 years, the poster above me is only correct between November and March of each year.
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Oct 7, 2014 01:14
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dietcokefiend posted:If it's been listed for 4 months with no traction, I think they will consider any offer. Put in what you feel as fair knowing they might counter with something higher or not reply at all. Is it sale by owner or through a normal agency? If you have an MLS listing, curious what the agency commission is... daslog posted:Do you have a real estate agent? If you have a good one, hopefully they can place your lowball offer in such a way that it doesn't insult the seller. It's just business, but sellers can take it very personally when you tell them that their pride and joy isn't worth what they think it is. This is being done through an agent, but it is the seller's agent since I found the place on my own by driving around through a neighborhood I like. I got a lawyer with a real estate specialty looking over stuff from my side, it's probably not really necessary in this case since there aren't any contentious issues with the property but the price was pretty reasonable and I just feel better knowing that a non-conflicted expert thinks that everything is in order. Cheap insurance given the overall cost of a home. Anyway, it was a brutal week at work so I ended up delaying the offer until today. I included a short cover letter to the effect of "I really like this property and would like to place an offer for [15% below asking price]. I have researched the final sale price of comparable homes in the area and believe that this offer is in line with these market values. In addition, I have all the loan/insurance/etc prep work done and no schedule constraints or requests for actions on the part of the seller, so we should have a quick, hassle-free sale if this offer is accepted." Basically I was trying to frame the offer not as a lowball but as a neutral evidence-based market analysis with the conclusion "this is the best you're likely to get from anyone" and then sweeten the deal by basically asking for nothing outside of standard contingencies. Nothing to do now but wait and see how the seller reacts.
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Oct 11, 2014 02:22
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Mahoning, thanks for your comments so far - having subject experts always makes these threads a ton more interesting to read. I'd like to get your opinion on being a buyer who doesn't use a buyer's agent. Basically I do most of my research online, then do a drive-by of the property on my own to see how it looks in person, and then if I'm still interested I contact the listing agent to do a walk-thru. If things get serious after that I have my own lawyer with a real estate specialty look over the paperwork before making an offer. My reason behind not using a buyer's agent is that (A) my past experience with buyer's agents is that they want you to just please loving buy something now rather than wait for a property that is a truly good match to come along, and (B) I think/hope that this turns the seller's agent to my side a bit since they are going to get the entire commission if the home sells to me so they might tend to "help" the seller see their way to accepting a lower offer. The downside is that I might miss out on a few deals that get closed before the property ever gets publicly listed but I'm not in a particularly hot market area and in no particular hurry (month-to-month apartment lease) so I'm OK with it. I've also bought/sold one home before so this isn't my first trip to this particular rodeo. Does that sound like a reasonable strategy or is there something I'm missing out on?
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Oct 17, 2014 02:28
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Welp, the place that I've been looking at for the last month and finally made an offer on ended up in the No Deal category. The seller bought it in 2006 at $235 and seems stuck on the idea that it's still worth what she paid for it during the bubble. Comparable homes in the area are currently selling in the $175-$205 range and they've been on the market for 5+ months now with no serious interest before me so I put in a bid at $200 which is actually slightly above I think it's actually worth today. They countered at $215 and I turned it down since I think it's realistically in the $190-$195 range. In my rejection letter I mentioned that I'd still be interested at $200 if they change their mind in the future and I haven't found something else. In the meantime they can go back to paying maintenance on an overpriced empty place in a slow market, and I'll go back to trolling zillow.com for other houses. I don't regret my decision but drat we went to a lot of effort to vet the place thoroughly and it's a shame to see it all go to waste.
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Oct 19, 2014 03:28
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PDP-1 posted:Welp, the place that I've been looking at for the last month and finally made an offer on ended up in the No Deal category. Update: After receiving the news that I had rejected their counter offer the seller apparently spent last night doing some soul searching and decided to accept my original offer at $200. Looks like I'm gonna be a home owner soon. If I had one of those 70's mood rings on right now it'd be flickering between whatever colors represent panic and joy. Mahoning posted:That's not true. But I have seen problems where changes to an existing listing didn't show up at all. Yeah, that zestimate thing can generate some terrible results at times - the property I'm purchasing includes two adjacent lots but zillow's algorithm only seems to account for one of them and spits out a way-wrong number. I think zillow has the best search tools though, so I use it as a starter and then cross-reference any interesting properties with the other main sites and the realtor's personal site listing.
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Oct 19, 2014 23:52
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The seller agreed to my offer and I got a fully signed contract yesterday morning. Since this is an older home it carries a risk of having lead paint but was largely renovated in 1996 and the disclosure statements indicated that there were no known lead issues at this time. I have a 10 day window to do lead testing in if I want to and since having to do lead mitigation would suck I want the test. When I called up the realtor to schedule a time to let the lead paint inspector in he went nuts. At first he tried to do the "I'm an expert and you're a novice" thing by telling me that the lead test was a total waste of money and never in his 25 years in the business had anyone had one done, i.e. only a money-burning troglodyte would even consider such a foolish act. When I persisted he slipped into legit anger mode and stated "all homes of this age have lead paint, this home almost certainly has lead paint, why would you throw away hundreds of dollars on a test that you know is going to come back positive?" That seemed like a good time to end the phone call. I took a few minutes to get my head together and did two things: (A) I called up the lead inspection company and bumped up my "general spot check" plan to the "test every painted surface in the house plus soil samples" plan for an extra $200, and (B) wrote out an email explaining, in as neutral and factual of language as I could manage, that while the disclosures indicated no known lead problems the realtor had just verbally stated that there was almost certainly a lead problem and I fully intended to go through with the test as per my rights in the contract. I also said that while we all hope the tests come back negative, if there are lead issues I'll want to re-negotiate after getting estimates for appropriate mitigation. I cc:'d the seller directly (so the realtor couldn't twist or filter my words) and invited their input on the subject. Lead test is currently scheduled for 10am this Thursday, I plan to be there alongside the realtor to witness the inspection. It should be a fun time.
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Oct 22, 2014 05:18
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baquerd posted:Best of luck, and nice move cc'ing the sellers directly. How did you get their contact information? During the contract negotiation the realtor would pass along messages to the effect of "see seller's comments below, what do you think" which included the full email header info. I dug her email address out of that. slap me silly posted:That realtor sounds like an idiot but... if you are that serious about avoiding lead you should maybe not buy an old house. It's a risk, but if you have the place thoroughly tested and price any mitigation costs into the sale I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with being given signed statements indicating no lead is present, then having the realtor who gave me those documents verbally state that lead is certainly present but I shouldn't bother to test for it. He's trying to shift the cost of the lead mitigation (if any) from the seller onto me and that's not gonna happen. PDP-1 fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 05:45
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adorai posted:further, what is the problem? If you aren't eating paint chips, scraping the old paint off, or doing a full demo, lead paint isn't going to hurt you. I'm buying the place with the intent to do some renovations, when that time comes I'll have to get a building permit and they're going to ask about the lead situation due to the age of the home. If lead is going to cause a huge price increase for that work I'd like to know about it now.
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Oct 23, 2014 03:45
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It sounds like he got a great deal on the place since it had been maintained so poorly, if he has the skills/motivation to fix it up it would go up in price substantially more than what the repairs would cost. It's not a bad investment if you're willing to put in the work. I'm doing the same thing but just at a lower level - the previous owner of my place was just a self-styled artist with atrocious decorating taste instead of a person with a legitimate mental illness. I'm buying it for cheap as an 'ugly house/awesome location' prospect and figure it will take about $20k in work to get it to an 'awesome house/awesome location' condition. At that point I figure the value of the property will go up by $30k-$50k and it'll be a nice place for me to live, so it's well worth the extra effort.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:36
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Since we've turned to renovation chat here's a few pics of my ugly place that is in a really nice neighborhood. Luckily the structure of the house is in good shape and the utilities have all been brought up to code so it's mainly a matter of toning down the aesthetics to something that matches the traditional feel of the older neighborhood better. The master bathroom features a free-standing purple tile wall with industrial light fixtures and a trapezoidal table for your shin-bumping pleasure. That closet on the right is also free-standing, the sinks are located between it and the main wall behind. The corrugated sheet metal accent near the tub is a common theme both inside and outside the home. The shower (not pictured) is made of bare concrete cinderblocks and has a door so you can easily step outside naked if you want. Optionally, you could save the trouble of going outside to moon your neighbors by just taking a bath in that tub with lots of windows.  This backyard shot shows more sheet metal accents, the pink-orange color of the exterior and the purple trim. That door in the metal box is the shower door I mentioned earlier. I think the metal box was supposed to be an outdoor shower at one point but they built it with non-treated lumber so it's just a rotten mess now. The shrubs were placed too close to the house and keep moisture in so there's a lot of soft spots on the window/door frames.  The kitchen isn't super-awful, but is definitely decorated in a way that was probably considered 'modern' sometime around 1980. The bright colors and angles give me a Max Headroom vibe. The upper shelves on the left are hung with 1/4-20 threaded rod from some unistrut channels that are bolted to the ceiling. I think the idea with the lower shelves is that you're supposed to put your stuff on those wicker baskets. You can't see the bottom of the central blue table's leg in this pic, but it's a metal sculpture that looks like a rocket ship. The yellow dividers on the right are more free-standing wall segments, and there are random little windows everywhere including one under the sink.  The house is in a traditional neighborhood (a registered historic architecture district even) and stands out like a sore thumb. Once I tone down the more garish bits it should fit in much better and be a lot more appealing to the average buyer. Also the backyard is huge, used to be part of a city park, and the lot is just a 10 minute walk from the center of downtown so when the home isn't so funky it's gonna be a great place to live. 
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Nov 2, 2014 19:42
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A family friend who was a hardcore nature lover bought up nearly 500 contiguous acres of wetland over the course of his life and worked with the local DNR to maintain it as pristine waterfowl habitat. When he got too old to live there he sold it off with a restrictive clause like "this land can never be sub-divided, only one home is allowed on the property, and these restrictions must be passed along to the next buyer(s) forever". He basically built his own do-it-yourself wetlands protection area. IANAL, but presumably as long as the buyer was informed of the restrictions and agreed to them as part of the contract they should remain effective. It's kind of like a real estate version of the GPL for people who care about a property for reasons other than money.
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Nov 16, 2014 01:33
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The title of this thread is looking like it may become prescient for me. The home I'm in the process of buying had a kitchen expansion done 18 years ago. There's a crack on the floor where the new part of the house meets the old part, but that's to be expected since they weren't built at the same time and would have settled slightly differently. When I did my walkthru I thought "that's a normal expansion crack", when my architect uncle did his walkthru he said "that's a normal expansion crack", and when the appraiser did his walkthru he noted it as a normal expansion crack. Unfortunately when the bank read the appraiser's report they saw FOUNDATION DAMAGE and flipped out and insisted that I have the property inspected by a foundation specialist. Fine, whatever. I got a foundation specialist to come out for a mere $250 and during the inspection he said "yep, that's a normal expansion crack alright". Unfortunately in his report he couldn't just state that fact directly, he had to lard up the writeup with all of the services his company offers and now the bank won't sign off on the loan because of the uncertainty he raised. We're a little more than a week out from closing at this point and the bank needs 3-4 days to do its thing after all issues are resolved so if this isn't settled out by Tuesday at the latest the closing will get delayed and all the other involved timelines are gonna go to poo poo. I've got movers scheduled, notified my landlord of intent to vacate, and took time off of work over Thanksgiving week to move with the expectation that everything was going to go as planned. Thanks, foundation inspector guy, for insisting on plugging your unwanted services and potentially making this harder and more expensive than it needs to be. Guess what company won't be getting any future business from me based on your shittily-timed sales pitch. PDP-1 fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Nov 16, 2014 |
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Nov 16, 2014 04:56
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Bloody Queef posted:This probably won't help you now, but why did you give your bank the inspection report? Anytime I've done a mortgage the only thing they needed inspection wise was the wood destroying insect report. I always try to give the bank as little as possible including financial documents. I generally just show the bare minimum of what I think would qualify me. My mistake - the report came from the appraiser that the bank sent out, not the home inspector.
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Nov 16, 2014 15:01
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 14:21 |
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Are there any general home improvement/maintenance/upkeep threads for those of us who have already completed the home buying process? I found a few highly specific threads in Hobbies & DIY where people are documenting their own personal Groverhaus re-enactment, but nothing geared to more general discussion.
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Mar 9, 2015 02:54
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