I don’t have anything more to add then what has already been discussed. I think Russ and Dr Boom made the best point. With regards to Dr Boom, you need to figure out a way to minimize the prejudice that accompanies any VA offers. VA offers are great deals. I had a listing in the spring and the buyer was VA and we sold it to them. It went off without a hitch. They overbid the other offers and we took it. As previously mentioned, the VA inspection, (which is also true for FHA) is such that any items flagged MUST be payed for by the seller. So maybe you figure out a way to overcome that, perhaps making sure that all these things are remedied prior to the inspection at your expense rather then the sellers. How you do that, well you need to be creative. You may have to extend yourself and there will be an element of trust…
As for the market conditions and market bottoms? No I don’t see it being a bottom at all either. We have already bounced in many areas. Which is more frustrating, no jobs or no good deals on homes? It all sucks and is all manipulated. Yet it continues and will continue. For all those who wish for the tax credit to go away, it could very well be replaced by a bigger one!!! How f’d up would that be? Alternately there are some who predicted that the entire economy would be crashing around Halloween or so… maybe that will happen.
Finally in terms of sellers thinking that nobody will get residential loans anymore and dumping properties for well below list price for cash? Not so sure about that.
I have seen more then a few homes go for below list price because of cash deals but moreso because they will not get the loan due to damage, remediation or other items, not because the lender secretly thing the bottom is falling out of the residential loan industry.
I believe Obama will peel money out of his wallet personally to finance your home before he lets residential lending go belly up. So I don’t see that as a concern.
We recently took a cash offer on one of our deals that was about 6% lower then the financed offers we had received but that was also accompanied by a 12 day escrow. We did it because of the rollover of putting that money into another opportunity, not because we felt the residential loan industry was kaput.
Try to keep the faith. Also as posted by others, work with a good VA guy hang in there.
