I can give some details since I am firmly in escrow and loan has nothing that would arise to derail it as far as I can tell.
I didn’t use an agent, I dealt with the listing agent. If you play the repos, an agent is a handicap. It didn’t matter in this case but in a few other failed attempts, the unscrupulous repo only listing agents will bury offers from represented buyers and only forward the ones from themselves or those where they use their friend/partner as the buyer agent since some banks don’t allow for both sides of a transaction. The only reason I lost those previous attempts was that I was outbid by other buyers using the listing agent as well, the represented buyers were irrelevent, their offers are never submitted. I have no proof of this but from my insider friends, that’s the game right now and it only applies to the non national outfits, the kind of fly by night offices that just do repo listings on the cheap. In fact one agent I met was so slimy I didn’t want him to have my social security number. Fortunately for me I found a respectable listing agent and finally won because I acted quickly and didn’t lowball, lowballing only works on houses sitting for 30 days+.
In the case of my purchase, I lucked into it, The realtor was on the up and up so no offer burying was going to happen (the first one I’ve found). I found and tracked it while it was going through the foreclosure process, visited it before a realtor was picked and looked at it the day it was listed, however I was the first one there, within five minutes of it listing and wrote a check within 5 minutes of looking at it. I chose to go a few grand above list as the net offer, the bank only looks at the net offer, so if you have a buyer’s agent, their commission is subtracted from your net, making you easier to beat and if the listing agent gets both ways it’s usually less, making your offer “net” more for the bank. I timed it with the election looming and rain, my offer got to the bank with two others that also came in on day one but I outbid them, it’s best to go with you highest and best out of the gate, some banks don’t want to go back and forth, these guys never countered, just took the highest, turns out it was mine but I didn’t know I had the highest until they accepted. After a couple of days some other offers came in (I think it was 8 more) all were higher than mine but mine had already been accepted, went with e-mail and scanning, had things signed within seconds because I knew it was a steal. While those other 8 people were thinking about it or sceduling a viewing, it sold to me, repos can be like that, sometimes they want them gone and sometimes the rain or an election, buys you a little time before others can see it. The first lesson is to do your homework before it lists and strike fast and furious, hesitation is your enemy. Walking, driving or biking in a neighborhood that you want to live in and looking for the no tresspassing sticker in the window turned out to be the way I did it.
The other piece of advice is the scheduling, if the realtor says they will meet you there tomorrow or the next day, insist they meet you there in ten minutes and let them know you aren’t looking, you are buying and you have a cashiers check in hand. Then insist they write the offer within and hour and submit it immediately, you have maybe 48 hours before the throngs come, you have to beat them. This does not apply to the overpriced ones, just the ones with bidding war start prices. If you see a listing on Monday, it will not be there by the weekend, you are going to need to leave work so you might as well do it on Monday and write the check Monday. As a single guy, I didn’t need to “talk about it” with my spouse or figure out a time to view it, valuable time saved. Also bring a fresh pre approval letter with you.
TemekuT-after careful thought I moved into your hood, after evaluating the general area I wanted, it was the best. e-mail me at [email protected] and I’ll be more specific plus I have a few questions.
Cardiff-very cougar friendly hood
OC-I’ve been following your blog and the resistance to the 2001 movement you espouse, you were actually my price point inspiration and bearvine also contributed. It can be done, it is done all the time, just not in SD or OC with frequency just yet. Your fundamentals are spot, stay with it. My pad is too new to determine price points those years but I shopped and owned in the adjacent community during those years and the ballpark is 1999-2001 using a few neighboring tracts that were there in those years and factoring in a few variables. It’s firmly 2001 and under but 1999-2001 saw huge appreciation here so it gets fuzzy and there were some cheaply built or poor locations of tracts that I chose to exclude, pure ppsf for a zip code can be misleading.
Cashflow, it had slowed down considerably but it’s cranking back up, the holidays is a good time, competition is softer. The repo slowing legislation backfired, things are taking off again.
harry, everyone disagrees with me, no biggie, it’s easier to laugh with me than agree with me.
To everyone else, the well wishing is greatly appreciated and I hope everyone gets what they are looking for, don’t settle! wait for it!
