patrick.net

If you want reassurance I think you need to get a little more specific about the house, and the offer you made. If youre saying you offered 200k less than what they wanted, and this is nyc, (I live in the bronx by the way), I could see how the realtor might not even bother responding to that offer. I know most people just love to bash realtors on here, and many times with good reason, but there are also plenty of buyers and sellers who are also morons at times.

Aliag, You go girl!
90% of Realitors are lying sacks of shit, and you are playing stupid to pretend otherwise.
Realistate has been a game where the cards are stacked against buyers for a long time. Recognize it and don't play stupid.
If you want to make low ball offers (and why the hell shouldn't you)! get your realitor to find the bank that owns the mortgage and send your low-ball offer to the bank as well as the listing agent. And remember morale is a two way street.
When you make low ball offers you are assaulting and insulting the bank and realitors morale, and asserting your power... they fear the power of buyers and they don't dare let you sense their weakness. Never the less you are doing the entire market a huge favour by asserting the controll of your money!

At the moment I have been making all cash low ball offers about $100k off of the listing price. I have found no takers, but the properties still sit. You know what, I don't care! If they love their foreclosed/short sale house so much they can keep it.
You will find a property when it is time, but until then you need to be tough and firm!

Nomograph says

There's no such thing as an "offer email". An offer is a legal contract, signed by you as the potential buyer, which may then be signed by the seller.

An offer and a contract are two different 'events'. While the 'Final' legal expression of the transation (Contract) per Common Law are required to be written, offers/counter offers/advertising/expressing of interest can be verbal or written... email, phone, face to face, etc etc.

aliag says

I could really use some reassurance that the realtors are bastards

And many here on PNET will tell you the current RE process is broken. While many in Congress/Media/J6P are chasing Wall Street/Banks the REA are still playing the bubble game. In their minds it a V Shape recovery. Good times ahead.

I may be a moron, but I want to make sure I'm the right kind of moron: am I being moronic for low-balling by 200k and thinking that the realtor might ever respond, or am I a moron for thinking about entering the housing market this early in the not-recovery? (Or both! Two for the price of one!)

(My friends think I'm a moron for not buying as soon as we could for as much as we could... I'm getting used to this whole moron thing...)

The specific house is: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2024-43rd-St-Long-Island-City-NY-11105/31944164_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address} (though the address is slightly incorrect: it's 42nd street and it is actually 100 years old... since the seller is 90 years old, now moving in with her kids, and moved into the house when she was two.) I have chatted up the neighbors a bit...

What the listing doesn't tell you:

The house is frame, not brick. Minus $50-80k in value right there off the brick comps.

The upstairs kitchen is ripped out, walls would have to be put in downstairs to give the people there privacy/safety if it was a two family, it is half a block a from a huge Con Ed power plant, and a fifteen minute walk to the bus... which would then be a ten minute ride to the train that would take you to Manhattan. (So: yes, you could rent it-- to locals and people with low paying jobs. But it will not capture the interest of renters fleeing Manhattan or Brooklyn, so you wouldn't get well-heeled/stupid tenants no matter how much granite counter top you put in. Luckily for them, we don't want to rent it. Like the 90 year old owner, we want to use it as a single family home for the next 40 to 80 years...) That said, for rent calculation-- if you rented out the whole house as it is-- taking out the asbestos but not putting in a second kitchen, for instance-- it would probably rent for between 2500 and 3000. If you did it up with stainless steel and made it a true two family, you could get *at most* 4k/month from the two tenants. But that would also require a significant financial outlay that we just don't have-- nor do we have the grey market connections to get it done cheaply.

Oh yes, the asbestos-- There is asbestos around the basement pipes and tile on the walls. No one knows how much that would cost to remove without getting qualified engineers in there with measuring tape.

The brief conversations I had with the listing agent indicated that this, as all things, would be part of "negotiations"... She said (twice) that the bank would not give us a loan with asbestos in the basement at the time of sale... So I submitted an offer (in the manner that she requested) in the spirit of negotiating.

...Since we placed our offer, friends are now suggesting we are morons/too nice for not having our own buyer's agent. Since the buyers agents I have tried to work with stopped returning my messages, I can only assume they are so busy with other, less difficult clients, they have no interest in my money. I am being forced by them to DIY... Not that I mind... I've just been struggling (a lot) with the cognitive dissonance of being the one with the money, but not being the customer. (as in, The customer is always right...)

...We do have a lawyer and a mortgage broker, both of whom have answered my questions promptly and professionally, and I am confident in their skills. (Just in case there was some concern that I was a total naif.)

We are a young family and I am hungry for a garden of my own... but not so much that I am willing to pay what the house *might be* worth after $150k of work is done on it....

...so, those are my details. Hope they are at least entertaining, if not instructive...

That is hella expensive. I would advice to not venture outside your comfort zone of what you are willing to spend. Brokers usually are hubris driven types, make money off others debt. You work hard for your money, no sense of giving it all up to some debt driven industry that just wants to take your money and care not for consequences later.

It is very saddening to see people shackle themselves to 30 year loans and give up 10 to 15 years of their life to the bank when they fall onto hardship due to circumstances they simply did not see coming to start over paying for a painted wooden box with a door and a window.

Rule of thumb is, if it costs more than single income can support comfortably don't go into it.

Hope this helps dear.

Aliag, You are doing the right thing, by doing your math. If it doesn't add up it doesn't add up.
If it can sell at the price they are asking it will, and If they can't find someone with the ability and willingness to pay that money it won't sell.
I know you want it, but never fall in love with any property. There is always another one.

I wrote a really long comment and then decided to wait to submit... This evening I got back to the computer and the realtor had finally (after 4! weeks!) written back. Ranting on Patrick may be my lucky charm...

thomas.wong1986 says

Nomograph says

There's no such thing as an "offer email". An offer is a legal contract, signed by you as the potential buyer, which may then be signed by the seller.

An offer and a contract are two different 'events'. While the 'Final' legal expression of the transation (Contract) per Common Law are required to be written, offers/counter offers/advertising/expressing of interest can be verbal or written... email, phone, face to face, etc etc.

Um, you should consider changing your name to Thomas WRONG. Clearly you have never made an offer on a house and have no idea how the process works.

So what happened next?

American in Japan says

So what happened next?

....Since you asked... ;)... After assuring us that the property was undamaged in Irene (we used that as an excuse to remind her we exist early last week) she wrote, "Also, please contact me if you are interested in discussing a higher offer."

Which my inexperienced eye reads as, "Your offer sucks... But we haven't had a better one. Try again, you big meanie."

I am currently crafting a carefully worded reply that boils down to, "Why should I? (No, really, give me evidence to bolster your claim that I should value your house at a higher level, and I might just do that...)"

I am fully aware that I risk "losing" this property. But other properties will have a different mix of positives and negatives, and the longer we wait the more we save up for unexpected boiler explosions and roof collapses.

Whee! Not fun!

Thanks for your advice and support... I expect this to be a long and carefully drawn out experience.

aliag says

I risk "losing" this property.

That is hilarious. You're not losing anything you did not already have.

Taking your word about what you said about the house in detail, I would never pay that much for it. 699 plus the amount of work needed to go into it to make it an actual true 2 family house would be a ridiculous amount of money to spend. This sounds like a case of probably both the seller and the realtor being morons. Old people are usually unwilling to change and adapt to certain realities (their house not being worth as much as they thought). The realtor seems to be incredibly bad at their job, if they would entertain showing a house so overpriced, with so much work needed. Also, the asbestos abatement is SOLELY the problem of the owner, as you cannot even get a loan for a house with asbestos abatement needed. I recently bought a house that required a small amount of abatement, and my realtor told me they are forced to take care of that, you should not be negotiating that in the price of ANYTHING. That is their problem, and if they aren't willing to fix that, and be more reasonable with the price, then you should take your 500k elsewhere, simple solution. Try looking for FSBO, maybe putting an ISO ad in the paper. For my next house I hope to buy a FSBO, and pocket that brokers commission as a reduction in sale price.

Also I would like to mention that I know for a fact there are 2 family new construction homes (around 2000-2007) for anywhere from 550k to 700k in my neck of the woods in the pelham bay section of the Bronx. I am really having trouble understanding why that house would be priced at 699.

aliag says

...Since the buyers agents I have tried to work with stopped returning my messages, I can only assume they are so busy with other, less difficult clients, they have no interest in my money. I am being forced by them to DIY... Not that I mind... I've just been struggling (a lot) with the cognitive dissonance of being the one with the money, but not being the customer. (as in, The customer is always right...)

Nomograph says

It sounds like you don't know how these transactions work; you are definitely best off using a buyer's agent if you are serious about buying a house.

aliag:
you say that you're using a buyer's agent - but it sure doesn't sound like you are. If you're calling the number of the listing agent and negotiating yourself, you're not using a buyer's agent. That's a seller's agent.

Many of us here - most of us, actually - appear to believe that realtors are scum-sucking bottom dwellers who benefit from the painful process of buying/selling a house. However, if you're going for short-sales, it's a necessary evil to work with one of these awful pieces of shit.

You need to find yourself an elusive being - an honest realtor who wants to assist you in finding a house within your price range that you want to buy. I've heard that these people exist, although I've never met one. They must place your needs and wants above theirs and be willing to listen to you... think of it as finding a date where you're gonna get screwed, but you'll walk away with a house.

Kinda like marriage, except you'll be much more disillusioned in the end.

well, i live in the neighborhood, and the house is priced in line with what is available here. @PaulfromDaBronx, Astoria is much more convenient to Manhattan (or to Brooklyn or to the rest of Queens) than is Pelham. You can't really compare across neighborhoods. There are plenty of less expensive neighborhoods in Queens as well. That said, I feel your pain aliag--we have been on the sidelines because housing prices in Astoria/LIC are insane. They have come down around $100K from the peak but are still at least $200K overpriced IMO. The housing stock is old and often in poor condition but still seems to sell at a premium. I wish you luck with your house--there are some other houses on sale in the 45-48th street area that seem much nicer, albeit smaller, for the same price. you might check out some of those. i know there are some open houses today.