All Forum Posts by: Asim R.

Rafael,

Your advice is quite insightful. Regarding your question about whether this is a owner-occupied or rental property, it will be an owner-occupied property. However, as my long-term plan is to have some hard assets (real estate) to complement capital market holdings, I hope to learn from my first purchase experience.

Raymond,

Your point is quite valid. I keep reading about the 2% rule. Unless I venture into a war-zone in metro DC or metro Baltimore, it'll be tough to get to 2%. I keep reading about my people in this area acquiring properties around 1.5% or perhaps slightly lower. Thank you for your thoughts!

Update:

My RedFin agent saw this update and contacted me. I am aware that all posts are public, but I think that I've a right to be concerned that I'm being cybertracked.

Hi,

I'm a newbie, who is closing on his first home (personal residence). I am using RedFin as a buyer's agent, as I was enticed by the money back (lower buyer's commission) towards my closing costs.

Background:
The property in question was a single family detached suburban as-is home in MD. The seller was asking $330k.

1) When I asked the agent about what price to bid, she came up with $310k, telling us that we should meet in the middle. When I asked her how she came up with that price, she told me that it was a sellers market so she arrived by working back from asking price. It was my mistake to not fire her at that point. Instead, I asked her to prepare comparative price analysis based on recently sold, recently under contract and current listings. Only at that point, she went and did the analysis, which lead us to the final contract price of $300k.

2) As we were newbie about the process, we initiated both home inspection and appraisal process at the same time. Home inspection led to some issue. When we tried to negotiate, we learned that our walk-away costs were both the cost of home inspection and home appraisal. If we had waited to order home appraisal after home inspection, our walk-away costs would have been lower.

3) After negotiation, when we removed the home inspection contingency, I realized that I had not seen the written termite inspection report. When I asked my agent, why did she let us negotiate, she tried to hide behind the fact that this is an as-is house. Luckily, termite report came clean.

I'm not sure if it is the agent-specific experience or RedFin experience, but I was quite disappointed with them. Am I being unreasonable? The first mistake would have cost us $20k, luckily, I did some homework which avoided that.

I'd like to get thoughts from experts on this. I keep getting the nagging feeling that, with a better agent, I could have saved another 10k.

Guys,

Thank you very much for your detailed and quite insightful responses. This really helps.

Some follow-up questions:
1) How much would it cost to hire a RE attorney to review the papers? I'm in the metro DC area (MD side)

2) Other than the local RE investor's meeting and asking for referrals, is there another suitable way to find a reputable one? I could ask my buyer RE agent but I'm not sure if she is the best referrer.

Many thanks again!

Hi,

I'm buying my first condo in a few weeks. I plan to live there but, hopefully, in another year, I'll have enough saving to buy another condo for investment.

As a newbie, I have a number of questions. I'd appreciate if the experienced posters can share their views.

1) Why are some properties is listed as an as-is? I can understand the rationale behind some, as they require major overhaul. But, we saw some condos, that appear to be in decent conditions, based on a 20 minute tour.

2) For the as-is properties, should we expect to uncover some major issues during inspection?

3) By listing the property as-is, does the seller have still have obligation to disclose issues with the property?

4) If I decide to make an offer on as-is property, and the inspection uncovers some issues, can I back out and get my initial deposit? In order to make this happen, what conditions should I include in my offer letter?

5) As you know, the REO inventory has really declined, so I'm not able to find a lot of REO properties in MLS that I'd be interested in. However, on sites like Trulia, I see some properties, which are not in MLS, but are either available in Trulia or via Realtytrac.com. Are these properties which are available right now? Or are they will be available in the near future? I reached out to the agent listed on a number of them but never heard back.

6) What's your experience with realtyrac.com? Is it worth it to pay for their subscription? Can I expect to find REO properties listed that I wouldn't find in MLS?

7) One of the RE agents mentioned that the short sale properties require a lot patience. How long does it typically take to purchase a short sale property? In what steps the delays can occur?

Thank you very much for your insight!