[drboom]

No advice to offer, just an anecdote.

My wife and I closed on a short sale in July. Our offer wasn’t the highest, but the higher offers were VA/FHA–and the seller was flat broke. Further, there was a ton of junk on the property accumulated during the seller’s father’s 50 year tenure, and all of the other buyers wanted said junk gone before closing. I knew we couldn’t offer more, so I made disposal of the junk part of our offer.

11 Dumpster loads later, I think we’re two thirds done getting rid of stuff (anyone want 20 pounds of canned spinach flakes dated 1973??). It has been an insane amount of work, and we’re doing it on a shoestring.

The point is that I took a look at the whole situation and tailored our offer to give maximum benefit to the seller–she wasn’t going to make any money, so any other benefits I could throw her way would help us quite a bit. The rest was up to the bank (short sale, remember), but that’s a roll of the dice no matter what.

You have to make your offer stand out somehow, and that means you have to talk to the seller and pay attention to what they say. We made three offers during our house hunting. One house was snapped up by someone with more money than sense (cash offer almost 20% over highest “norrmal” offer); our other two offers were accepted, both on short sales. The first of those fell through when BofA decided to play hardball with the sellers, who sensibly walked away. It is still vacant 6 months later.

[drboom]

No advice to offer, just an anecdote.

My wife and I closed on a short sale in July. Our offer wasn’t the highest, but the higher offers were VA/FHA–and the seller was flat broke. Further, there was a ton of junk on the property accumulated during the seller’s father’s 50 year tenure, and all of the other buyers wanted said junk gone before closing. I knew we couldn’t offer more, so I made disposal of the junk part of our offer.

11 Dumpster loads later, I think we’re two thirds done getting rid of stuff (anyone want 20 pounds of canned spinach flakes dated 1973??). It has been an insane amount of work, and we’re doing it on a shoestring.

The point is that I took a look at the whole situation and tailored our offer to give maximum benefit to the seller–she wasn’t going to make any money, so any other benefits I could throw her way would help us quite a bit. The rest was up to the bank (short sale, remember), but that’s a roll of the dice no matter what.

You have to make your offer stand out somehow, and that means you have to talk to the seller and pay attention to what they say. We made three offers during our house hunting. One house was snapped up by someone with more money than sense (cash offer almost 20% over highest “norrmal” offer); our other two offers were accepted, both on short sales. The first of those fell through when BofA decided to play hardball with the sellers, who sensibly walked away. It is still vacant 6 months later.

[drboom]

Your tax dollars at work. Mine too, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder why my wife and I lived way below our means and saved for years so that when it came time to buy our first house (in July) we could put 20% down and get decent financing with near-800 FICO scores.

I kind of feel like a sucker for doing the right thing: maybe we should have lived la vida loca instead of grimly pinching pennies. Seems to be working for the Baby Boomers–why can’t Gen X (which I am, barely) have a little fun too?

[drboom]

Your tax dollars at work. Mine too, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder why my wife and I lived way below our means and saved for years so that when it came time to buy our first house (in July) we could put 20% down and get decent financing with near-800 FICO scores.

I kind of feel like a sucker for doing the right thing: maybe we should have lived la vida loca instead of grimly pinching pennies. Seems to be working for the Baby Boomers–why can’t Gen X (which I am, barely) have a little fun too?

[drboom]

Your tax dollars at work. Mine too, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder why my wife and I lived way below our means and saved for years so that when it came time to buy our first house (in July) we could put 20% down and get decent financing with near-800 FICO scores.

I kind of feel like a sucker for doing the right thing: maybe we should have lived la vida loca instead of grimly pinching pennies. Seems to be working for the Baby Boomers–why can’t Gen X (which I am, barely) have a little fun too?

[drboom]

Your tax dollars at work. Mine too, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder why my wife and I lived way below our means and saved for years so that when it came time to buy our first house (in July) we could put 20% down and get decent financing with near-800 FICO scores.

I kind of feel like a sucker for doing the right thing: maybe we should have lived la vida loca instead of grimly pinching pennies. Seems to be working for the Baby Boomers–why can’t Gen X (which I am, barely) have a little fun too?

[drboom]

Your tax dollars at work. Mine too, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder why my wife and I lived way below our means and saved for years so that when it came time to buy our first house (in July) we could put 20% down and get decent financing with near-800 FICO scores.

I kind of feel like a sucker for doing the right thing: maybe we should have lived la vida loca instead of grimly pinching pennies. Seems to be working for the Baby Boomers–why can’t Gen X (which I am, barely) have a little fun too?

[drboom]

Our agent split his commission down the middle with us and picked up the home warrantee as a gift.

Why? We didn’t waste his time. He showed us one house and he wrote one offer for us … which obviously turned into a closed sale.

Short sale annoyances aside, it was easy money for him and he did a great job getting us through a short escrow with minimal fuss. Everyone won this time.

[drboom]

Our agent split his commission down the middle with us and picked up the home warrantee as a gift.

Why? We didn’t waste his time. He showed us one house and he wrote one offer for us … which obviously turned into a closed sale.

Short sale annoyances aside, it was easy money for him and he did a great job getting us through a short escrow with minimal fuss. Everyone won this time.

[drboom]

Our agent split his commission down the middle with us and picked up the home warrantee as a gift.

Why? We didn’t waste his time. He showed us one house and he wrote one offer for us … which obviously turned into a closed sale.

Short sale annoyances aside, it was easy money for him and he did a great job getting us through a short escrow with minimal fuss. Everyone won this time.

[drboom]

Our agent split his commission down the middle with us and picked up the home warrantee as a gift.

Why? We didn’t waste his time. He showed us one house and he wrote one offer for us … which obviously turned into a closed sale.

Short sale annoyances aside, it was easy money for him and he did a great job getting us through a short escrow with minimal fuss. Everyone won this time.

[drboom]

Our agent split his commission down the middle with us and picked up the home warrantee as a gift.

Why? We didn’t waste his time. He showed us one house and he wrote one offer for us … which obviously turned into a closed sale.

Short sale annoyances aside, it was easy money for him and he did a great job getting us through a short escrow with minimal fuss. Everyone won this time.

[drboom]

flu, you left out a key piece of information: are you looking for a one man band or do you just want to wrap a spec around a banana, toss it over a cubicle wall and have a defined module show up in CVS a couple of days later?

You can get the latter for quite a bit less than $100k (unless there’s a banana embargo). Architect level prima donnas will be way over your budget.

Pick your poison: both approaches have drawbacks.

[drboom]

flu, you left out a key piece of information: are you looking for a one man band or do you just want to wrap a spec around a banana, toss it over a cubicle wall and have a defined module show up in CVS a couple of days later?

You can get the latter for quite a bit less than $100k (unless there’s a banana embargo). Architect level prima donnas will be way over your budget.

Pick your poison: both approaches have drawbacks.

[drboom]

flu, you left out a key piece of information: are you looking for a one man band or do you just want to wrap a spec around a banana, toss it over a cubicle wall and have a defined module show up in CVS a couple of days later?

You can get the latter for quite a bit less than $100k (unless there’s a banana embargo). Architect level prima donnas will be way over your budget.

Pick your poison: both approaches have drawbacks.

[Author]

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