How much lower should I ask when buying a house? (Greenville: for sale by owner, real estate)

[Pennsylvanian]

I am looking at moving my family to Greenville by the end of the summer. We are looking at houses in the $150,000 to $175,000 range with an acre or so of land if possible. I
was curious how much lower than the asking price to offer when we find a home. Would it be fair to offer $10,000 to $15,000 less than the asking price?

Also, we are looking at Simsonville, Fountain Inn, and Piedmont (need to stay within a commutable distance of Bob Jones). Would appreciate any comments on these areas.

Thank you.

[WAZEAZ]

Hey there Pennsylvanian we came from up there too! Where are you coming from? We are from Erie. We relocated to Simpsonville in late November, where we rented until we found a home in Fountain Inn. We also looked around Simpsonville and also Mauldin, not too much in Piedmont because of the commute to GE. We fell in love with our subdivision of about 85 homes. The lots are a bit under an acre or so, but nicely wooded which is what we were looking for, and the neighbors are very friendly. There is actually a house in our neighborhood for sale for 174,900. It is in Quail Run Subdivision. If you want more info let me know.
I guess none of that answers your questions on pricing though. We bid on a repo for our son and the bank has yet to accept our offer, and we are now 10,000 below the counter offer they gave us. We are waiting to see what happens with that. It does seems that you get more house for your money down here.
I have never driven to Bob Jones University, but when I google mapped it it was under a 1/2 hr. down I385. It doesn't look too bad.
Fountain Inn is nice because it is near enough to have all Simpsonville offers
and yet we are away from alot of the busyness that is there.
Well I hope that helps you and if you have any other questions I am sure the amazing people on this forum will be sure to help!

[southerngentleman]

Find out what the home sold for last , try zillow.com to find the info. Then offer a reasonable amount over that,unless lots of work has been done to increase the house value! Besides if you give them a low estimate they will either accept it or come back with a counter offer!
In this market I would also look at how long the house has been for sale, If it had been on the market for a long time I would offer what they had in the house,plus a few thousand.

[Tapshoe]

Good advice...

In addition, when researching how long any house has been on the market, find out not just how long THIS listing period has been but when the seller actually first offered it for sale. Most sellers will remove their property from the market briefly and then re-list so it doesn't appear stale.

Best success.

[creekgirl4life]

While Zillow is a good resource you should keep in mind that it might not be 100%accurate. You should hire a REALTOR(r) to work for you as your Buyer Agent. If a home is properly priced, there may not be room for lower offers. If you do choose to lower your offer by $10k to $15K and there are other buyers, you may be outbid.

[Tommy1981]

I've heard many Realtors say negative things, or at least cautionary things about Zillow.com. Most of them are talking about Zillow's "Zestimate" for each house for sale which is supposedly a current assement of the house's value. Their Zestimate is based on paper alone, looking at sale history and tax numbers, so if the current owners have done some major upgrades, Zillow wouldn't know that and their Zestimate would be off.

If you look at everything but their Zestimate, I've found the site to be incredibly accurate particularly with the sales history. I recently purchased a house with the help of a Realtor representing me (not just the seller's realtor). She was a ton of help in arranging viewings (we visited nearly 50 houses in 6 weeks). When it came time to offer, she pulled comps for the neighborhood for 12 months and gave us the report. I went to Zillow and entered the same constraints for time period and location and got the EXACT same results. They listed the same houses (by address) and the same dollar amounts for the previous sale. I believe the numbers from a house sale are made public after closing, and Zillow gets that information the same way the Realtors do.

I was a first time home buyer, so I was definitely glad to have the help and advice from my realtor. Looking ahead, I can't say I would go with a Realtor again, because Zillow and the other real estate websites make it so easy to do it yourself these days. Plus if you're buying from a house thats for sale by owner, you'll see it on Zillow, where you wouldn't see it on a realtor website. I guess thats why there's animosity between the realtors and Zillow...

Southerngentleman is spot on. See what the last price and sale date was for the house. Average appreciation is 2-4% per year. If their price is a good bit higher than that, then they're over priced. Its a buyers market, so the chances of getting in a bid war are slim, especially if the house has been on the market for more than a month. If you've got several options for which house to buy, you can be more aggressive with a low offer. If you really want to buy the house, then don't be so aggressive. Most sellers would counter just about any offer these days, but some may be turned off so much buy a low offer that they wouldn't counter, and then you're really stuck.

[ckeegan]

Pennsylvanian, as a fellow transplant from PA (Pittsburgh) to the Greenville area (Simpsonville), I have to say that the amount of your initial offer is completely dependent on the individual circumstances surrounding the house and the seller. Since I know you are hoping for an average, I will give you one. If you look at every single resale (single-family and condo) from 2007, then the property sold for an average of 96.89% of list price. In fact, we have always averaged approximately 97% below list for the past 4-5 years.

Again, this is just an average, and many factors play into the seller's willingness and ability to negotiate. Some of these factors can be found on sites like Zillow.com, but definitely not all. I stongly recommend the use of a buyer's agent to anyone looking to buy a home in any market. Greenville is a buyer's market, and sites like Zillow are great tools, but much of their information is pulled from the tax records, which can be grossly inaccurate (I remember one year when my square footage shrunk on the assessor's website, and then went back up the following year). Sites that pull from public record, often leave out many crucial factors such as "how much the seller of that comparable property paid in closing costs for the purchaser?" Simple items like that can make a difference of $4,500 on a home selling in the $150,000 area, and those items must be taken into account since they affected the seller's bottom line.

Using a buyer's agent is done typically at no cost to the buyer, and can end up being one of the most valuable resources throughout the buying experience (it's a lot more than showing houses ). On the flip side, Tommy1981 could make the listing agent very happy on his next purchase, if the home he chooses is listed with a Realtor.

Tommy1981 is correct about appreciation though, which has ranged from 2.85% to 4.4% over the past 5 years, depending on the criteria you use (i.e. single-family only, condos included, areas of town, etc). At the same time, there are neighborhoods that haven't appreciated as well as others, and some have appreciated very well.

I hope this helps.

PS - I have no animosity towards Zillow, in fact, I was one of the first around Greenville to start listing my properties for sale there. It's a great tool, but it will always lack some crucial information, which needs to be considered when buying or selling a home.

[justNancy]

I don't know if this will help you, but on the Journal Homes site I found the 2003 sales price of a home I recently saw listed in Simpsonville. Of course, as SouthernGentleman mentioned, you don't know if there have been upgrades in the past few years. I mean, just updating a kitchen with new cabinets and granite countertops can cost over well $10,000.

There was a thread on this forum last year where the OP asks what mistakes did you make when purchasing a home that you might find interesting. http://www.city-data.com/forum/green...made-your.html

[Pennsylvanian]

Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate your time and detailed answers. WAZEAZ, I am from the Harrisburg area. Was wondering if you were glad that you rented first. We are considering doing that as well, though we don't want to miss the buyers market that is there now.

[WAZEAZ]

We had wanted to purchase right away, and were fortunate to have a employer that allowed us 2 house hunting trips, My step father was in hospice at that time, and so we were not able to take advantage of both trips. My husband was to start his new job on Dec. 3, so we only had enough time to find a place to rent. We spent several days driving around looking at possible rentals and thankfully found something. It was actually a house that he had called about weeks earlier. It had been rented, but the people turned it down at the last minute and it became available on the 2nd day we were down here. Talk about provision! We are now very glad we went that route now, because we are not sure we would've picked where we are now if we had bought right away. If you can find someone to rent from, it seems the best way to do it. You really need to get an idea of the different areas before you make that big decision. Hope this helps, and let me know if I can help in any other way...Oh and one more thing, we can check and see if the house we rented is available if you like, she seems to do a lot of short term leases.