lexington

Sold for 25% OVER list price!!

by John Rice

I listed a manufactured home in a tiny town in northern Scott County on 15 acres last week. I have had it in my pipeline for close to a year so I have been watching the market in the area for a while. Prices have gone up quite a bit, but lately similar properties have all been listed for about $160k.

So we got pictures and put it on for $160k. I fully expected it to sell for a little more since the market value is no longer determined by recent sales. It is determined by how desperate the buyer is.

Turns out they get more desperate every day.

We got 8 offers. 10 actually but two were for a financing type that did not do manufactured homes so we can’t really count those.

One offer was $155k. I always laugh at those buyers and scratch my head. What rock have they been hiding under that they and their realtor don’t know that practically every house in multiple offers goes for at least list price.

Five of the offers had escalation clauses. That is where the buyer pretty much says they will pay so much more than any other offer up to a certain price.

I got one offer for $200k. My mind was blown. No escalation clause. Just a flat $200k.

This gave me the chance to tell the buyer’s agents with the escalation clauses that they might want to up their amount if their buyer really wanted the house.

Fortunately one buyer whose offer had some better secondary terms raised their escalation clause to be $200k. I have seen where people throw out some high number on an escalation clause to get their offer noticed but they have no intention of every going that high. I called that buyer’s agent to confirm they were legitimately willing to go that high. They were. They got the house for $200k. Next step is to convince the appraiser it is worth that.

Is it a good time to buy?

by John Rice

This is a question I get asked a lot these days. People are worried about a housing crash and they dread the process of finding a home. It is not a fun time to be a buyer for sure!

My response usually is “Today is a better time to be a buyer than tomorrow will be, but it isn’t as good as it was yesterday.” Prices are going up every day between the whole supply/demand thing and inflation. I don’t see an end in sight short of some major economic crisis that creates a lot of unemployment and/or skyrocketing interest rates. (And keep in mind that we DID just have a major unemployment situation in 2020 due to COVID.) Even if either happens, there will be more buyers than sellers since people will simply decide not to move from their current home, which will create an even more out of balance supply/demand situation.

All this is pretty wild compared to 6-7 years ago. Back in 2014 I bought a rental house that had been on the market for more than 6 months. I was the only buyer and I offered much less than the list price and the seller was happy to accept it. I just sold that house for more than twice what I paid for it. Granted I did paint it, put new carpet in the bedrooms and replaced 3-4 windows over all those years.

So, if you are on the fence about entering the market, I say go for it. Sure, you will pay top dollar. You will probably have to bend over backwards to get a seller to even consider your offer. You might lose a few houses along the way. But what is the alternative? Keep renting? With all this inflation we are seeing, your rent is soon going to go up. And it will always keep going up. Meanwhile, the principal and interest part of your mortgage payment will always stay the same. All that can change in your payment is the property taxes and insurance amounts you pay.

Moving Day!

by John Rice

It’s finally here. Moving day. Well, almost. It is this weekend. The day I have been looking forward to for the past 5 months. I had no idea something I was so excited about could be so stressful. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what it is going to be like living in my new home. Now I am daydreaming about what it will be like when my old house is empty. I haven’t moved in 9 years. I had no idea how crazy it is to try to put everything you own in boxes and take it somewhere else.

In case you are just now seeing this, I bought a small home on 15 acres about 20 minutes from my old house. We have spent the past several months renovating the inside. It is going to be a huge change for me and my family. One we are excited about. It has been done for about a week and I have been busy doing several small things like getting appliances in and working on some items from the home inspection. In all reality, I have really wasted a lot of time trying to fix things and leaving them in worse shape than I found them. LOL, this house has reminded me how bad I am at those type of things.

This experience has put me in the shoes of my clients. I’ve had to find a house, buy a house, get through a home inspection, close, pack, schedule movers, get utilities changed, prep my old house to sell and still be a realtor to my clients. This makes me even more empathetic to the stress my clients are going through when they move.

A pleasant surprise this morning

by John Rice

Like always, I woke up, made a cup of coffee and checked out the new listings. I saw what prices got reduced, then viewed the pending and sold listings. Pretty routine. Lately it takes about 30 seconds to go through the 15-25 new listings every morning.

Today I woke up to more new listings than I have seen in a while. Many of them were under $200k!

I am really hoping this is the beginning of a new trend. There has been speculation that a lot of sellers were holding off on listing there homes until COVID got under control and they felt okay about letting people in their homes. Today might have been the first day of that.

I am starting to hear from a lot of sellers that it might be a good time to sell their homes. Of course, it has been for a long time. However, when many sellers feel like prices have gotten crazy and decide to cash out, it could mean a shift in the market a little. While I think it will remain a Seller’s Market for quite a long time, I totally welcome a more balanced market. It is good for everybody.

Or it could just be that it is the first big spring day when all the sellers begin to put their homes on the market. Sellers usually need the first couple of warm weekends to spruce up their yards before listing.

We’ll see how the next few weeks pan out. All I know is that it got me excited to think about so many new listings hitting the market!!

2 wrong ways and 1 right way to win in multiple offers

by John Rice

I recently got to experience a part of real estate that I don’t do often. I got to be a seller. In all of my life, I have only been a seller 4 times. I sold the first house we owned a long time ago. I sold two rentals in the past several years. And just this week I sold another rental property.

The first sale of this house fell apart and it came back on the market. Two of the offers I got were from people who had seen it when it was first on the market.

Wrong way #1

I got an offer from somebody who had lost in multiple offers the first time it was on the market. It was the exact same offer with just the dates changed. The buyer’s realtor seemed a little upset that I didn’t take it the first time and was a little snarky in letting me know that I should have accepted it then. Here is the thing. If I didn’t pick your offer the first time when I had other offers, why would I pick it again when I also had other offers. They should have changed some terms to make it more attractive to me. I even told the buyer’s realtor what I didn’t like about the offer.

Wrong way #2

I got a phone call from a realtor who had a couple of questions about it. This realtor asked if I did “Escalation clauses.” I wasn’t totally sure what he meant but I did tell him one of the offers I had in hand did have an escalation clause, so I guess I do them. He then told me how they were not fair to buyers and that he wouldn’t show my house to his buyer. Since I had two other offers in hand, I really didn’t care. He called me later that night and said his buyer wanted to offer $150k for the house that they hadn’t even seen yet. The list price was $130k. Both my offers were $130k and $130,500. If he had submitted an offer earlier, and done the escalation clause he was opposed to, his buyer might have gotten my house for something like $131,500 instead of $150k. He dropped the ball. Instead of riding his high horse about a perceived injustice in the market, he should have shown her my house and written an offer. But no, he lost his client the house and was willing to let her overpay for it.

Right way #1

I get a phone call from a very wise agent. She tells me how her people saw the house the first time it was on the market. They currently live on that side of town and want to stay. That tells me these buyers really want the area. She tells me that they are preapproved with a local lender. Always the best choice. I asked her who she usually recommends for a home inspector. One of the inspectors she mentions is one I personally use when I buy houses. I tell her that and the next thing I know, they have scheduled an inspection with the inspector. So, I am a seller and a realtor. What am I looking for when examining offers? The best terms I can get from a buyer that I feel will mostly likely get the deal done. This agent recognized my concerns and adjusted. In the end, her ability to think about what she could do to get the house for her buyer is what got it.

This is what you need a realtor for. Today’s market is like a traffic jam. You can have a realtor who sits there not moving and complains, a realtor who just stays stuck in the same lane, or one who figures out how to get around obstacles. I feel sorry for the buyers represented by the first two agents.