[paladinking]

The consequences of stimulating economic recovery.

[Bideshi]

Many people are still holding out at unrealistic prices hoping to avoid a loss on a bad investment. Many of them will be squeezed out by this time next year. Some, with more money than good sense, are paying the unrealistic prices (the "greater fool" principle at work...), but there will be less and less of them as this economic rot continues.

[mjjudd]

Pretty sure the 'buying game' is covered in a few other threads in the Vegas forum.. but my learning experience was:

- Originally submitted offers based on asking price (+ or - based on home values at the time) and maybe 1 out of 10 offers were accepted.

- Then started submitting all offers at +10-20k of asking prices, maybe 1 of 10 were accepted

- Lastly had my realtor send me the recent sales of areas in the house I was looking at and based my offer on $$/sq ft of the area I was looking at. 75% of all offers using this method were accepted.

If you have a realtor or friend that can send you the sales sheets, highly recommend using that route.. MUCH less frustrating and effective. From the sheet, find a similar home (ie same size/year/area) and based on $$/sq ft it was sold at, apply that to the size of the house you are looking at (ie. $xx/sq ft x xx00 sq ft = your offer amt).

As for increasing the loan amount.. every single offer I submitted asked for a copy of my loan approval letter, which is why I had to increase my loan amount multiple times.

Also be advised that many of the houses required me to get another approval letter from the bank that owned the house. You do not need to get a loan through them, just need to humour them by getting the pre-approval letter (just another sales tactic by the banks).

I ultimately ended up basically buying my house online. I was stationed in the gulf and could not make too many trips back here. Started looking at houses in Feb, made offers from Mar-May, came out in May to look at maybe 15 houses and put about 8 offers out (using bad method of putting out offers based on asking price). Had 3 offers accepted (well 2 accepted, 1 contingent, 2 short sales). Continued looking online, made some more offers and in July cancelled my short sale and locked in to the house I currently have. My realtor did most of the 'leg work', sent me photos and their opinions of the properties (ie, smells like dog, looks like squaters were using it, etc). One of my previous offers I was pushing her for a property on Martin Luther King Blvd in north vegas, and she was really trying to talk me out of it (the house looked really nice in the photos). She mentioned it was a 'bad area' and I was all "hey I'm military.. I can deal with bad areas." After looking at the police blotter for the area... very grateful she talked me out of that one..ha.

I was a little worried about buying a house I had never seen until i came out to view it (the same week I was going to close on it).. house still had the 'new house smell' and was in really good condition. Been living in the house about a month now and have zero buyer regrets (except for leaving the wife alone in the house for a year...need to reclaim my 1/2 of the closet and clean her junk out of the garage..ugh).

[tugandregina]

Originally Posted by mjjudd

As for increasing the loan amount.. every single offer I submitted asked for a copy of my loan approval letter, which is why I had to increase my loan amount multiple times.

not to sound dumb, but is the loan approval letter different from a pre-approval letter?

ugh, we were figuring if we wanted to spend 200k on a house, we could look in the 210 range and negotiate down. sounds like we will actually need to be looking in the 190k range. . . big bummer!

[mjjudd]

Pre-approval letter, thats it. In hindsight, I should have just applied for a 300k loan so I would not have had to adjust it so many times (dont worry, when they draw up the actual paperwork your loan amount will be based on the sales price of the home).

Dont get bummed out yet... get the price sheets and see what the ACTUAL sales prices the houses are going for. Zillow is not completely accurate, it lists mine for the asking price..not what I paid (it was appraised at 15k less than asking price and seller reduced price to that... but Zillow still reflects the original asking price).

Just try to be patient and have a decent list of houses you are interested in. I had a few 'dream houses' that I was hoping for.. but in the end just started putting out offers on 'acceptable' houses (kind of glad I didnt get the 4-5000 sq ft 'mansion' for 250-300k as taxes and whatnot would probably kill me in the long run).

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by tugandregina

not to sound dumb, but is the loan approval letter different from a pre-approval letter?

ugh, we were figuring if we wanted to spend 200k on a house, we could look in the 210 range and negotiate down. sounds like we will actually need to be looking in the 190k range. . . big bummer!

It depends. I would certainly look at 210 homes, maybe even 215. Then if interested check the comps and history of the home in question. Then decide whether the house can be pursued or not. If, for instance, the house has been there for 60 days at the list price...go for it at a reduced one. Brand new classic? Don't waste your time.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by mjjudd

Pre-approval letter, thats it. In hindsight, I should have just applied for a 300k loan so I would not have had to adjust it so many times (dont worry, when they draw up the actual paperwork your loan amount will be based on the sales price of the home).

Dont get bummed out yet... get the price sheets and see what the ACTUAL sales prices the houses are going for. Zillow is not completely accurate, it lists mine for the asking price..not what I paid (it was appraised at 15k less than asking price and seller reduced price to that... but Zillow still reflects the original asking price).

Just try to be patient and have a decent list of houses you are interested in. I had a few 'dream houses' that I was hoping for.. but in the end just started putting out offers on 'acceptable' houses (kind of glad I didnt get the 4-5000 sq ft 'mansion' for 250-300k as taxes and whatnot would probably kill me in the long run).

I generally have the client get a new approval letter for each house reflecting its price. Mortgage guys are use to that. Takes 15 minutes when you are preparing the offer. They email or fax it over. May have ten of them before success.