cottonmama Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Over on UmMusa's thread about her fifth offer on a house, a couple of other folks said they've had multiple offers go unanswered or fall through after acceptance. But I'm confused... because I thought this was totally a buyer's market. Am I wrong? Are sellers frequently having trouble working out deals with their banks even after the house is put on the market? Are investors buying up the good deals immediately? Or were the WTMers who had bad experiences just unlucky? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 It IS a buyers market, but even with our stellar credit and 30% deposit, 5 years of pay stubs, we STILL had to jump through hoops to buy our house. And we have a cushion, too. You need to have a sizable % of cashola down to buy a house right now, and sadly, many don't have that kind of savings. Banks are not loaning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 A couple issues here. Investors/all cash buyers are definitely an issue. We also are having a ton of appraisal issues. You spend months working with a selling bank coming up with an acceptable sale price, but then if the house doesn't appraise for that, our bank won't loan against it. Still mostly short sales/foreclosures that we are dealing with here. We were in escrow on one house, only to have the bank say they weren't going to lend anymore at that time. It has been a mess for us. Holding out for *the one*.:tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dobela Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 We spent almost 2 years looking for a house and made over 8 offers in the time frame. One seller backed out because the house they were going to buy fell thru over an appraisal. Another we were outbid with a cash only offer. Another we lost after the owners realized that they could rent it for more than they could sell it. Another fell thru as a short sale because the bank kept changing the amount they wanted. Then they decided that the owner had too many other resources to do a short sale. Then they decided that the owner could let the house go into foreclosure. (That was the house we still talk about. We REALLY wanted it). Too many times though the owner owned more than the appraisal and we didn't want to pay more than the appraisals. The owners usually didn't have the means to absorb the extra owed. There were also a couple of houses that we really liked, but didn't buy because of the federally required flood insurance. One was near a creek that has overflowed the banks once in the last 30 years. The governement says that it is in a flood plain and any new owners must purchase flood insurance thru the government, a year in advance due at the closing. The flood insurance was going to be $6000 for the first year for one house and $4000 for a different house in a similar situation. We couldn't bring that much to closing so we didn't make an offer on the houses. Interestingly, neither has sold yet despite really low prices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JessieC Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 I really don't get this market. We want to sell our very nice little house that we bought for close to 200k in 2005, but have been told it would sell for no more than 150k. We owe more than that, so with that on top of realtor costs, we haven't even tried to sell. I know a lot of potential sellers are getting these low appraisals and are just waiting it out. Seems like everything is at a standstill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 We got to the point where we would tell our realtor to just put an offer on a house and if it was accepted BY THE BANK, then we would go look at it. :glare: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnaM Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 The Texas market did not suffer as much as some of the other states so we had an excellent buying experience. We were able to get a no cash down loan, we negotiated all of our closing costs out of the contract, we got over $30K knocked off the price of the house (we purchased new so we negotiated in upgrades and such) and I had a coupon (haha I know!) for $3k off the price of the house which I held onto until last to make sure they didn't short change us on what they could do as far as upgrades. Our loan was fairly easy to get and we got a decent rate on it. I'm not sure which made more difference, the Texas market or purchasing new, but we had no trouble at all. We are about to put this house on the market and expect to break even, but we have only been here for 3 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueenCat Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Some of it's going to be regional too. Around here, we never had a slump. Things stayed stable, not going up, but not going down, when other areas were going down. Here, it's a pretty even hand between buyers & sellers, with both having to do some give & take. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vonfirmath Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 The Texas market did not suffer as much as some of the other states so we had an excellent buying experience. We were able to get a no cash down loan, we negotiated all of our closing costs out of the contract, we got over $30K knocked off the price of the house (we purchased new so we negotiated in upgrades and such) and I had a coupon (haha I know!) for $3k off the price of the house which I held onto until last to make sure they didn't short change us on what they could do as far as upgrades. Our loan was fairly easy to get and we got a decent rate on it.. We just bought a late 90s house in TX and didn't have any real problems either. We avoided short sales and foreclosures though because we wanted to move in by the time our lease was up. (end of July). We put in an offer early May and signed closing on June 28. We're currently putting in new carpet, paint, and making other fixes (it had been a rental for several years) and will be moving in the end of the month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlylocks Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 It IS a buyers market, but even with our stellar credit and 30% deposit, 5 years of pay stubs, we STILL had to jump through hoops to buy our house. And we have a cushion, too. You need to have a sizable % of cashola down to buy a house right now, and sadly, many don't have that kind of savings. Banks are not loaning. :iagree: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sleeplessnights Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 We just bought a house in the Miami area in January. We were pre-qualified at a low rate and were ready to shop! The market here is down about 50% from its peak, so we wanted to get a good deal. First of all, about 80% of the houses on the market were short-sales. We have heard many horror stories about these deals taking months to work out because they have to be approved by the seller's bank, and the banks are backed up. Another 10% were foreclosures. You can get a decent deal, but the homes are trashed. Toilets missing, wires stripped out of the walls, mold growing everywhere due to the power being shut off. The remaining 10% were conventional sales. No problem, right? Well, this is where the cash buyers from South America come in. Any decent house is scooped up within a day or two of coming on the market. I never thought it would be so difficult to find a place in a "buyer's market." We finally got a decent place, but it wasn't the "deal" that I was hoping for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delirium Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 A couple issues here. Investors/all cash buyers are definitely an issue. We also are having a ton of appraisal issues. You spend months working with a selling bank coming up with an acceptable sale price, but then if the house doesn't appraise for that, our bank won't loan against it. Still mostly short sales/foreclosures that we are dealing with here. We were in escrow on one house, only to have the bank say they weren't going to lend anymore at that time. It has been a mess for us. Holding out for *the one*.:tongue_smilie: :iagree: Having just bought a house last year, I can say that it is a buyer's market BUT the banks own most of it now. Sometimes its quite difficult to get them to cooperate because the house is only worth X now and they want to recoop the X0000 they're losing. We went through multiple offers and had 4 closing dates on different houses before we finally got this house that we have now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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