I personally heard of someone who got a house, despite being outbid, due to a letter that was submitted with an offer. This is a meme from the peak of the bubble last time around, and the Journal recently ran an article which documented a couple of cases in bubblicious California. Rob and Julia Israch won a fierce bidding war for a three-bedroom townhouse in Mountain View, Calif., late last year even though their $750,000 offer—while $92,000 above the asking price—was topped by 11 rivals and was several thousand dollars below the highest bid. See Can I Buy Your House, Pretty Please? in the Wall Street Journal.
The Return of the Feed the Squirrels letter
By EBGuy Follow Tue, 15 Jan 2013, 12:57pm 585 views 9 comments
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Los Angeles, CA
Overwhelmingly, these are people using a buyers agent which is kiss of death in bidding war except sometimes they get lucky.
The best way to beat a feed the squirles letter offer from a buyers agent is use the listing agent to double dip- they will pour scorn upon any and all letters and slam your offer to the top o pile.
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Scottsdale, AZ
robertoaribas's website
dear home owner:
I am not going to show you pictures of my wife and kids, and tell you how much we'd love to make memories in your home. What the hell do you care, you're doing a short sale anyways, and I see by public records your wife left you. So screw the memories...
Nope, I'm going to buy your home and clean it up, rent it for a few years until the market recovers, and sell it to make a bunch of money. maybe the renters will make memories there, maybe they will make memories all over the carpet. What the hell do I care, as long as they pay the rent, i can steam clean the carpet.
I'll get your deal done, and you on with your life.
all the best,
rob.
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the bubble in Santa Clara hasnt corrected.. yet!
its a funny article... of course spilling the same nonsense...
tech jobs and highly desirable area...
and the same question back to the buyers...
so why didnt we see such behavior in prior decades pre 2000.
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It is my keen observation that East coast software engineers are more prudent with their money than West coast developers. I don't know one single SW developer that would ever live in a million dollar house, unless they just came from money and had it. But that would mean that weren't depending on a 100-150K salary to make mortgage payments on a 750K-1M spread.
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This is easy. They were only several thousand dollars apart. My guess is that the winning bidder has more cash to cover the shortfall of the appraisal. The sellers don't give a crap who buys the house. They want to highest price possible from the most qualifying individual. Apparently, the highest bidder was not the most qualifying buyer. There's nothing to watch move along.
@EBGuy, PK & I just got into contract on our 5th property last week. We recently refinanced our 2nd property and pulled out 102% of our initial purchase price and still have about $425/month positive cashflow. Still have a little money tied up in this property due to transaction and renovation cost.
Looks like we might be able to pull out 110%-120% of our all-in cost on the 1st property, depending on the appraisal value, and still have $400/month positive. If everything goes accordingly, we will get 100%+ of our money out of the first two deals and still own them with over $800/month positive cashflow plus over $300/month in principal reduction on the mortgages. It feels like we're running a legal Ponzi scheme. :)
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In scenarios like that I think short sellers usually are waiting for a letter telling them they are getting a financial incentive under the table. No one really cares about the rodents anyway.
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robertoaribas's website
E-man says
This has been very similar to my recent purchases. In fact the last one, was in short sale for 8 months, after the inspection, the seller cancelled. Bank approved price was $149K. Inspection revealed termites in garage wall, pool crack, roof problem over patio... other than that, minor stuff like a couple holes in drywall, needs paint, one broken door, etc. A few other things that looked expensive to fix; but upon further examination, they were not.
I took over the contract, and even got the bank to drop the price by $5000; My lender was very very quick, and I got a mortgage done on it 20 days.
Those are among the only good deals left these days.
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Mt View, Palo Alto, down to Saratoga and Los Gatos..
they are not squirrels.. they are rats.. BIG ones too.
suggest you get a pellet gun with a laser scope.
and not dont feed the neighbors cat.. because its a possum.
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"Those are among the only good deals left these days."
The nay sayers don't understand and blame it on the players. How do you fault them when they are clueless and have no idea what they are talking about? I don't want to waste my time correcting them, but when they call me names without knowing the whole situation and make an ass-umption about me. I just have to respond.
Anyways, happy hunting. I think I'm done buying this year after these 5 deals, but you never know. I hate to turn down a good deal. :)