All Forum Posts by: Ivan Jouikov

Some of these are REOs, some aren't...

Now, I do have another realtor who's willing to make these offers for me.

But when it comes to my personal residence - if I already spent lots of time with one realtor and he showed me a lot of proprties, and now we have a place under contract with him - would it be very bad "relationship" practice to start writing offers with another realtor? If we end up buying a place with the 2nd realtor - the 1st realtor will probably never want to work with me again...

As far as "email offers" go - are those useless?

In a search for my own property I finally got one under contract. It's a short sale and they've got 30 days to get the lien holder approval (they actually advertised it as pre-negotiated, but wanted 90 days for this).

In the meantime, I want to keep searching and making offers on properties.

My Realtor doesn't seem to be inclined to make official low ball offers - his reasoning is that it's "insulting" to the seller's agent and wastes everyone's time. This is a conversation we had over the phone yesterday:
Me: I don't want to waste your time and money by driving out and looking at all these properties, considering we already got one under contract. I still want to keep looking though, that's why I want to make some lowball offers on other properties.
Him: that's fine, but sending an email message saying "my client wants to offer $50k less than you're asking - how do you feel about that - should we even submit an official offer?" is far more effective than straight out shooting an official offer for a lowball price. Otherwise the agent will think "what are you stupid - why are you wasting my time with this"?

Any advice? Is he trying to save himself from doing extra work? As far as I know, an official offer MUST be passed onto the owner, whereas a lowball "email" offer doesn't have to be.

Thanks!

Rich, isn't EMD a powerful influential point in your offer? Buyer's market or not, it's always a seller's market when the deal is screaming. If you have 10 day inspection and 30 day closing/financing, with EMD going hard after the inspection - a seller might see it as a better offer than EMD going hard after 30 day inspection/finance (which you're going to keep on extending).

There's a property that I really liked (from description) but it went under contract before I got a chance to see it. I asked my Realtor what about making a competitive offer and he said it's sufficient to let the listing agent know that we also have interest in the property and they should contact us if their deal doesn't go through.

Another guy I talked to told me that some agents will break contracts (even in the middle of inspection) if a more competitive offer is on the table. There are potential legal consequences, but nobody pursues them (especially in the SFR world).

Any recommendation? Should I insist my agent make an offer? (he said they're in the inspection period).

Isn't the idea you look at 100 properties, make 10 lowball offers, and hope for 1 to get accepted?

I've looked at more than 100 properties; everywhere I wanted to make an offer - someone already made one. From that I learned to find out in advance if there are any offers.

So now, even though my agent thinks the offer is too low, and the listing agent is saying they're not even going to look at it... from an invester point of view - should I still ask the agent to submit the offers?

The reason I say offers is because there's another place I want to make an offer on. If these houses are sitting for months without any offers.. who knows.

So, from investor point of view, should I make those offers? Even though my agent might feel his time is being wasted?

So, it's listed for 209k but a lot of recent comps in the area go as low as 160k. Plus, this is an A-frame and should be even less desirable.

So I contact my Realtor and ask him to put in an offer for $150k. He gets back to me saying he talked to the agent, and the client is a credit union, and they would not even consider an offer this low.

I made my points to the Realtor and said that there's no harm in putting an offer on the table, but he said it would be a waste of everyone's time and he's just being honest with me.

To add, this is not my agent's normal market - he usually works in the near-Seattle markets, which are 1 hour drive north.

Any suggestions for me? Should I listen to my agent and let it go?

My biggest concern though - do A frames in a residential setting appraise similarly to normal houses?

Note I didn't say sell, I said appraise.

I'm considering the following place for my primary residence:

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Bonney-Lake/7223-191st-Ave-E-98391/home/2956561

I checked it out yesterday and I really liked (it really is something different) - I even had some beer with the neighbors who seemed really welcoming.

This place is an "A-frame" construction though. I'm guessing this would be harder to sell due to less people being interested in a place like this.

What about borrowing against it? Would it be appraised same/below/above similar sized lots/homes in the area, as time goes by?

Also, I found a thin crack (maybe 5" long, 1/3" wide) in the foundation - how bad is that? The realtor told me most people live with cracks in their foundation and don't even know about them. What's your take?

Also, from strictly an investment point of view, what are your thoughts on buying an A-frame?

Heh biggest challenge for me about remaining passionate is all the RE people I've come in contact with (brokers, agents) and how difficult they're to work with. But I guess building your team isn't something that happens on the first or the 10th contact.

Easy to be passionate if u getting paid ;)