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September 25, 2006
house!
I believe the term for what we are right now is "under agreement."
Our new home is up the street in Brighton, pending inspection, review of condo docs, and us getting a mortgage. If all goes well--and, being an optimist but also a realist, I have no reason to believe that we will hit any further snags--we will get the keys on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, thus leaving us to move boxes with one hand whilst eating turkey legs with the other.
Funny thing is, turns out that one of the women we are buying the place from is a Syracuse grad...and Newhouse class of '99 as well! How's that for a small world? Kara noticed the 'cuse sweatshirt hanging up when we went to look at the unit, and I checked the Syracuse alumni page to see if our suspicions were true. So when we went back to the open house, we had something to talk about. Did it help? Who knows. If past experience is any indicator, it probably did.
Kara and I were in Ikea when we got the phone call. She had never been to an Ikea before, so she was both thrilled and overwhelmed. That was certainly compounded by the fact that we ended up closing the deal over about a five-hour span on Sunday afternoon.
I'm very pleased with how things turned out. I was re-reading my old "mark.txt" file from last year, where I was keeping little tidbits of information and which I am now using again to keep track of what furniture we need and stuff like that, and I found a list of "must-haves" and "nice-to-haves" from our initial house search. We got all the must-haves--not basement, washer/dryer, dishwasher, 2 bedroom--and a lot of the nice-to-haves, including a small deck, hardwood floors, and a location near the T.
There were a number of other negotiations that have fallen through in the last few weeks to months. In one recent case, the guy bought at the absolute peak of the housing bubble, and, to boot, didn't take spectacular care of the place (two-prong plugs, questionable painting skill, no AC and windows that wouldn't accept standard window AC units). The fair-market value of the place was sadly about 10-15K less than what they guy paid for it.
In the case I alluded to in an earlier entry...well, let's put it this way: when you list your house, you never list it at what you want to get for it, certainly not in a buyer's market. If you figure your place is worth 100K, you list it at, say, 110K, the buyer offers 90K, you ideally end up somewhere around 100K. The other thing is, you have to look at the comps, which is what similar properties in your area have gone for...and this is important, you have to look at recent comps. What a unit next door in similar condition went for in 2004 is not a recent comp.
Oh, and another thing: you, as the seller, don't set the price. The market sets the price. Hopefully the market sets the price above what you paid for it. If not, you either take the loss or you wait until the market improves. Yes, you may have put years of TLC into the house and it may even have sentimental value, but the market doesn't so much care about that. What you can get for your place is what you can get for your place.
So anyway, this reticent seller wanted X and listed her property at X, so when we offered X - Y%, as is the normal opening gambit in real estate negotiations, she was not only offended, she dragged the negotiations on for about a week while we went back and forth. And it was on the day that she made her final offer that we saw the place we are now buying. The moral of the story: if you are trying to sell in a buyer's market, know the true value of your place, and negotiate quickly, lest a better place come along. Also, dropping your price by a whole thousand dollars on the first round of negotations does not send the buyers the message that you are a "tough bargainer with a fair idea of the value of your unit," it sends the message that you are "a real jerk and an idiot who is still going to be sitting on this place come next fall."
Unfortunately for those folks, but, things worked out pretty well for us, I think...again, pending that everything works out with inspection, etc. I'm very excited about having a 2-bed place with some real space in it. It has much better resale value, and it gives us room to grow should we decide to start a family while we're still in the city. Of course Kara is thrilled about the washer/dryer in unit, as am I, and I'm thrilled about the deck, as is Kara. The kitchen needs to be redone, but I think the appliances will last for a few more years until we have the time/money to do a big renovation. All-in-all, it has worked out quite well.
Posted by Mark at September 25, 2006 08:51 AM
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it has worked out "white well??" Glad to hear it.
[The beauty of the Interwub is that nobody ever has to see your mistakes. :) - Mark]
Posted by: Matt at September 25, 2006 04:44 PM
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My Mom reads this site. Controversy is fine, just don't swear. Please don't be a spamming jerk.