patrick.net

@aliag

It's always a buyers market. Without you, there is no sale. Present a written contract ,a period time for acceptance,a closing date & other stipulations.
Make sure all your paperwork is in order. Don't extent the contract.
If the agents,banks, attorneys,ETC.,ETC.,ETC,can't do their job in a timely fashion there will be no sale.

NEVER HAVE AN EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO A HOUSE or any material good, it can skew one's common sense.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/08/five-rules-to-remember-when-dealing.html

A bigger picture? Don't think you will have a problem with the language.

http://shoqvalue.com/george-carlin-on-the-american-dream-with-transcript

I'd expect to get frustrated today trying to buy a house. Prices are declining and sellers don't want to face that fact. Getting a good deal is going to involve making a lot of offers and getting a lot of rejections, but that beats the alternative of giving a delusional seller the bubble price they think they should get.

But you also have to be realistic. Some offers just aren't worth making. If a seller is completely unrealistic with their listing price your offer isn't going to wake them up. That's why my wife and I gave up in our house search. Prices started going up with the tax credit and we decided to step out of the mania. Things have turned around since then but we're still expecting new lows in our area.

Seems like what happens over and over is how emotions get mixed up with market forces. What a house will sell for is simple supply and demand. If there is a willing seller and a willing buyer even if that buyer or seller is shady, stupid, greedy, emotional - whatever human behavior applies - the sale can take place. The folks on this board who are trying to be logical, rational and knowledgeable and as unemotional as possible are stuck dealing with all the other emotional and/or stupid shady people who over pay or the greedies who won't sell till they see their price.

I personally think all the smarties like the buyers who post on this board with the 20% down and patient analysis of the market is still competing with the others who have been patiently waiting but they are just a little less patient than you. Once the market rids itself of the less patient buyers with money then what is left can be divvied up.

However, the market is probably too dynamic for an equilibrium to settle out and allow for perfection - perfectly balanced supply and demand and rational market players. In the meantime continue to be patient and play the numbers game like the sales people (of regular stuff, not houses) do. Dialing for dollars they call it ...keep calling the potential buyers until someone eventually buys. Same on the other side as a buyer..watching those listings till the right one comes along.

Similar to employment market? Some people will take a lower salary and be more qualified. The worker is giving more worth than money and the employer is getting more worth than they are paying for. Houses can be similar - some get more than it's worth and some get less. Worth being the highly subjective term.

Personally I think the market will never be perfect and transparent without places where humans can game the system. Maybe once Patrick dominates the market with his new tool we can find out that there are 1000 qualified buyers for the neighborhoods with 940 houses available for sale. Then you know you have to beat out 60 of them.

We need a housing market with no realtors. People are tired of the games. It is only a matter of time before this "profession" is obsolete.

I agree with you fourplex! I have been doing all the footwork (finding listings). Which is fine with me, because we don't have the time to be lead around on a leash by an agent being shown houses that don't even fit the criteria.

@investor90
I've been using OVERPRICED. Like your phrase better. "HIGH BALL"

For the $23,322 per year in property taxes, they would have to give me the house.

In previous recessions/ housing corrections, NYC lagged behind both in the initial drop and the eventual rise. (No clear reason-- we're just that special) ...Just one more reason I'm not in a huge hurry to meet the seller's list price...

Philistine says

When it takes an hour subway ride to commute to your Manhattan job and you pay 2500/mo to rent what amounts to A Compromise, you become mean and lose your looks.

...this just makes me giggle, every time i read it... quoted for truth and giggles...

(and thank you elliemae for your good wishes and others for points to think about... i am still not sure how we will respond to the realtor. it has occurred to me in the last 24 hours that we could just say, "and we look forward to speaking with you when the sellers drop their list price..." but i'm not sure i'm ready to end the conversation just yet... this is so very educational! whee!)

I don't know NY real estate, but I agree with Greg and Mike2. Honey, you're "hostile." Maybe you have a right to be, but nobody wants to work with hostile, and everybody can see hostile coming. Hostile makes everybody unhappy in transactions. More importantly, every Realtor knows that hostile doesn't close transactions. And if the market is as incestuous as you say it is, believe me, your reputation is preceeding you.

Suggestion: take a break. Go on with your life. Prices are not likely to go up in the next year. Then, maybe, if you think you can do it without making everybody, including yourself, miserable, look for a home again.

sfvrealestate says

Honey, you're "hostile."

...and Punkins, you're patronizing. (Hostile? Have you ever even *visited* Queens? I'm being a fuckin' sweet-voiced angel, here.)

sfvrealestate says

I don't know NY real estate, but I agree with Greg and Mike2. Honey, you're "hostile." Maybe you have a right to be, but nobody wants to work with hostile, and everybody can see hostile coming. Hostile makes everybody unhappy in transactions. More importantly, every Realtor knows that hostile doesn't close transactions. And if the market is as incestuous as you say it is, believe me, your reputation is preceeding you.

Suggestion: take a break. Go on with your life. Prices are not likely to go up in the next year. Then, maybe, if you think you can do it without making everybody, including yourself, miserable, look for a home again.

sfvrealestate

If you go around calling every woman you don't know 'Honey' then they have even more reason to be 'hostile'...no wonder women have a hard time dealing with condesending realtors.
Hang in there aliag. I am going through the same crap on the West Coast and getting mighty fed up with realtors. MORE MONEY 'HONEY'!

sfvrealestate says

Honey, you're "hostile."

aliag says

...and Punkins, you're patronizing.

She forgot to call you sweetie-pie and girlie. The worst offenders are often women, as if having a vagina gives them license to degrade others who have one too.

sfvrealestate says

Then, maybe, if you think you can do it without making everybody, including yourself, miserable, look for a home again.

You're a realtor, right? Realtors are like prostitutes, you hire them to do a job and they'll do anything for that paycheck. If not, find another one that will lie to you and tell you what you want to hear.

aliag says

(Hostile? Have you ever even *visited* Queens? I'm being a fuckin' sweet-voiced angel, here.)

Do you know how to ask someone in Queens what the time is?

"Excuse me sir, can you tell me what time it is, or shall I go fuck myself?"

- I'll be here all week, try the veal.

elliemae says

She forgot to call you sweetie-pie and girlie.

you're right! i feel improperly chastized and put in my place. i demand a thorough setting-down!

elliemae says

The worst offenders are often women, as if having a vagina gives them license to degrade others who have one too.

Well, to be fair: she's probably gotten what she wanted out of the system (whether that's the real estate system or the patriarchal system). she doesn't understand why I am rocking her comfortable boat. plus, she probably thinks she's getting extra loyalty points agreeing with the privileged while she shoves "her own kind" off the boat.

...Meanwhile, I feel a little uncomfortable that the discussion went from Generic Realtors are Generically Pissing Me Off with their Generic Sales Tactics to "this particular female is particularly offensive to me as a woman..."

I don't know if that's my cultural "nice girl" conditioning or genuine feminist concern that it's become a girl fight. Funny, eh?

(yeah, that's why my stand up career died a quick death a long time ago. try the veal at elliemae's...)

FWIW, an update: Wednesday, the realtor de-listed the property. Coincidentally, that was also when we finally came up with a response we were happy with to the realtor's suggestion we raise our offer. So, after it was de-listed we sent an email saying we thought our offer was fair and was made based on the information we had available. However, if the realtor had more information that she thought was relevant, we were happy to hear it.

I expect the property will get re-listed either with pictures, with a new kitchen and without asbestos, or as a rental. Slight chance it will get re-listed at a lower price, but I am not holding my breath.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Probably new pics, but I'll bet they don't spend much.

francophile100 says

This has definitely been one of the better threads in recent memory.

It was, until a realtor reared her head and decided to attack aliag personally. What was particularly hilarious about her post is that she said that no one wants to work with "hostile," but "hostile" money spends the same as any other.

(now i'm imagining dollar bills in combat boots and mohawks, spiking the punch and hitting on all the pretty boys at the party...)

Thanks for the nice comments. Realtors tell me that I show "NO RESPECT" to the profession. Guess what? THEY ARE CORRECT

LETS STICK TO THE ALL CAPS---blog the REALTOR WAY.

SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THIS LINK----> http://www.lumbleau.com/ SINCE 1947 they have produced more Realtors than anyone else in their mail order or online "Crash course GUARANTEED TO PASS or your money back!"

Also try YOUTUBE search channel "JIMTHEREALTOR" GOOD FOR laughs when you are looking for some entertainment --- video updates most days. Excellent insiders scoop on lying. He is serious---he thinks he is on "the outside"...but all he does is rat his "team" out.

HOSTILE! uttered by a REALTOR!!! Most Realtors that I have met have privately admitted they are LYING CHEATING BASTARD's who would cheat their own mother. Besides...if you just listen to one of them yakking away about all the "great features and amenities" of that old 1940 rat trap held together with glue nails and termites...you will hear a SUBTEXT THAT IS ALWAYS IN THE "CONVERSATION" :

Here it is :

CAVEAT EMPTOR! I AM A LIAR you better conduct DUE DILIGENCE---and I WILL LIE EVEN MORE IF I GET CAUGHT.

IT'S CALLED PASSIVE- AGGRESSIVE personality. THIS IS WORSE THAN "HOSTILE"... HOSTILE implies anger---emotion upset.

PSYCHOPATHS are DEADLY...it is alligator smiles, OPTIMISM spelled
F A N T A S Y L A N D . PONZI --- LIES AND MORE LIES.

REALTORS---" Characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are responsible for our housing crisis viua hyped house prices by people who "qualified" without underwriting. Though lacking empathy and emotional depth, they often manage to pass themselves off as normal people by feigning emotions and lying about their pasts. YES! LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE.

thanks investor90, love it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqXGBCiDb9E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE

(Barney Frank, "What Housing Bubble?")

A man's word meant something and now we just sputter out nonsense like Barney Frank has done many times in the past.

Update: Just got a call from realtor. Price reduced. If I hadn't shifted my obsession from Real Estate to the Wall Street Protestors (they are adorable and I love them and I've been feeding them for over a week and if anyone has questions about them and their adorableness I am happy to comment more but I don't want to spam, either....), I might be dancing even more in my seat. As it is: *jazz hands*

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.

Written communcation is verbal, too, unless you are communicating with symbols. You mean oral.