Purchasing house strategies

[mstng86]

Your answer.

Just found out his parents our selling the house. The guy died in a car wreck.

10% seems to be the norm in this area. Its not that difficult for them to make an offer, if they don't want to make an offer find another realtor.

Just sent the offer. We will see if we can do some negotiating. The family isn't using a realtor either.

[jayjohnson600]

mstng86, you are not being unreasonable, but your agents don't want you to waste his/her
time.

I had alot of trouble with agents when I started looking for a house in 2008. The market
was sliding each month, and I was bidding accordingly. Each agent was telling me that my
bid will not in get to a deal. That was true, because other people were bidding like the
housing market was going to go up. They made a mistake, and I kept losing houses to
people that were overbidding in a declining market.

I ended up going through at least 6 agents, then I just stopped using them. They were
lazy and full of conflict of interest, wanting me to bid up offers in a sliding market.

So, I ended up getting the forclosure lists and when I was ready to put in an offer, I would
latch onto an agent that was available, just to put in an offer.

As I understand it, the lazy and conflict-of-interest agents are even worse when they
list your house for sale. They want you to do ton's of work and still talk your asking price
down and then they put in the listing and they are gone. But, willing to collect their fee
if it sells.

Being successful buying real estate, means that you will have to do almost everything
except submitting paperwork. You will bascially need to do all the legwork and then tap on
an agent and basically give them the deal to push through.

It took me years to get my place, and as I look back, I should have just taken the courses
to get my own agent licence.

[jayjohnson600]

Oh, my winning offer for the house was 10% under their latest price drop(dropped $20k 2 weeks before
I put in the offer), and they pay $7k in closing costs.
Housing prices had slid quite a bit during 2009, and I was the only person on the bid. I think 2009 really
scared alot of people, seems like that was the bigged period of transaction freeze.
The POTUS established the home buyer "grant" around late summer 2009 in an attempt to get
transactions moving. The new home buyer "Loan" didn't have much effect. So, they changed the new
program to a "grant".
I am free and clear of the grant conditions as of Feb 2013. I won't have to pay it back.

My purchase was in January 2010. Now, that there's news out that "housing has bottomed", the climate
in housing has changed since my purchase. Or, at least the news has.

The next POTUS could have a direct effect on the housing market, concerning the mortgage
interest deduction.
Seems like there's a small chance the housing market could change for the worse.
Then there's the jobs situation that has an influence on the housing market as well.

You already have 1 bird in the hand with low interest rates and a big decline in the housing prices
has already occurred.
It's possible that it could get a little better, but it's already pretty favorable as long as your funding
source reasonably stable.