Well we are a handpicked buyer in Temecula – but only because we have been very proactive about our home search. We upfront let any realtor we worked with know that we were being aggressive and would be using different realtors for different houses that we offered on. We put in about 25 offers since last October. All of them were outbid (we didn’t want to fall in love and pay more than $100/ft.) or had some shady deal going on like mentioned – they would go pending the same day as they listed, or they would be sold to the realtor’s company, the same thing that others have seen. It has happened over and over to us. One day while walking to the sports park in Harveston we noticed that a short sale home we particularly liked had some activity going on – new people coming and going. We walked over and found out that the home had just been taken over by the bank. We called up the broker representing the bank and made a decent offer. The broker submitted our offer and it was accepted before the bank had even gotten the house ready for the mls, then we had to wait a couple weeks until the home was listed. It went pending after 72 hours and 5 other offers (I don’t know the prices) but ours was already accepted and we entered escrow right away. Now we are waiting for the appraisal, if it comes back lower than we have to renegotiate with the bank, but I doubt it since our offer was not even at the price the house listed for and the same as the house next door which sold last month for the same price but is smaller.
So – I know we didn’t get the best deal in Temecula (tg wins that prize) but we got a nice, 4 year old, decent house in Harveston for a price we can comfortably afford and the total costs with all the taxes and HOA will be less than we pay in rent for a smaller house. We’re pretty happy about it, I still feel a little bad for that one guy who bought a 1900 sq/ft house for $350,000 in here, we paid a lot less for a lot more house!
