Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The houses we were considering either got accepted offers or went out of market (whatever that means, do they just decide they don't want to sell it after 3 months in market? Maybe they rent it?)
The typical residential listing on Long Island is for 6 months but of course if the seller wants to end it early and the realtor agrees, it can be ended sooner.
A 3-month listing would be a bit unusual but if that's what the seller wanted as a "testing the waters" term, yes it could have been that too. Especially if the realtor convinced the seller to agree to an office exclusive (rare these days but still very much alive as an option) for a shorter term. There's a realtor (Eric Ramsay) on the south shore who is notorious for that -- they REALLY push hard for an office exclusive, and list for top dollar (overpriced, IMHO, almost every time) and so most of the time the house just sits. I know a couple of people who got talked into listing with them and then after the listing expired decided to wait a few months (especially if the listing expired during the summer and they didn't want to list again between then and the winter holidays) and go to another realtor as a multiple listing. So those houses that went off market unsold may well pop up again early next year.
@tailgunner, don't forget the cost of the cover if that is near the end of its useful life. That can vary quite a bit depending on how fancy/strong/expensive you want to get.
Most people choose one of the LoopLoc covers; the pool owners here can speak to how long those last. We had an 18x32 pool at House #3 and replaced the existing cover with a LoopLoc but that was so long ago (early 1980s) I can't recall the cost.
If you have a custom shaped pool you may need a custom cover, that's something to keep in mind when designing. Ours was a simple rectangle so a stock cover worked fine.
There are covers that are automatic (you don't have to remove and store them every year and you can close the cover when the pool is not in use, thereby minimizing "stuff" that would otherwise fall in) but of course those are more expensive. Some are fabric and some look like giant horizontal window blinds.
You will need to get the pool winterized each year unless you are confident you know how to do it yourself. You'd need an air compressor to blow out the water lines, for starters.
they REALLY push hard for an office exclusive, and list for top dollar (overpriced, IMHO, almost every time) and so most of the time the house just sits. I know a couple of people who got talked into listing with them and then after the listing expired decided to wait a few months (especially if the listing expired during the summer and they didn't want to list again between then and the winter holidays) and go to another realtor as a multiple listing. So those houses that went off market unsold may well pop up again early next year.
that makes sense, but do they still show up on Zillow/Redfin/etc. when they are exclusive?
Also I am seeing a lot of houses that were listed, then unlisted, for few years, or changed hands several times in last 5-6 years.
I thought cover was just a tarp to keep leaves/snow/etc from falling in. Is it that expensive? I figured maybe $500 or so depending on thickness for manual one. I am not sure about automatic or how fancy house would be to have one of those, but I guess they must be expensive. Automatic pool cover sounds like a lazy job since you just operate it twice a year, but it sure is convenient.
BBCjunkie that makes sense, but do they still show up on Zillow/Redfin/etc. when they are exclusive?
Also I am seeing a lot of houses that were listed, then unlisted, for few years, or changed hands several times in last 5-6 years.
Depends on whether the exclusive-listing realtor chose to put it on one or more of those sites. It's not automatic; the listing agent pays to have them appear there. So a house could be on Zillow and/or Estately or wherever, but not on MLS.
Not surprised that you are seeing that. Sometimes people have a number in their head that they think their house should be worth, and then when they can't get that they say "Eh, we'll try again another time." That is assuming there is no reason they HAVE TO sell.
In my former neighborhood there was a big house on an oversized property that the owners listed every 2 or 3 years almost like clockwork. We lived there for 12 years so it was kind of a joke "Oh the yellow house is for sale again, let's see how much they want this time, LOL" . They asked close to or slightly over a million each time. Same owners for 30 years (house was built in 1920.) They finally sold it in 2012 for $620K ... they had listed it early that year starting in the high $800s. That was the only time they dropped the price during the listing term.
Remember that Sandy happened in 2012 so depending on where the houses you saw are located, some of those changes in ownership could have been Sandy-related.
We were planning to put our house on the market in 2008 but were blindsided by an unexpected major health problem. Then the recession hit and depressed the market so badly that it made no sense to list (loss would have been massive) for the next three years. Then Sandy hit our waterfront area community in Sept 2012, really killing the market but by early 2013 I had no choice but to list. Took a year and a half to sell even with constant price cuts. The people who bought it from me in October 2014 put it on the market in June 2018, no idea why. They did nothing whatsoever to the house, didn't even repaint. It was weird. It took them until March 2019 to sell it, after dropping the price six times. They ended up selling it for only $9000 more than they'd paid me for it. You never know.
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 07-17-2019 at 03:21 PM..
I thought cover was just a tarp to keep leaves/snow/etc from falling in. Is it that expensive? I figured maybe $500 or so depending on thickness for manual one. I am not sure about automatic or how fancy house would be to have one of those, but I guess they must be expensive. Automatic pool cover sounds like a lazy job since you just operate it twice a year, but it sure is convenient.
In the most basic terms yes a pool cover is a tarp BUT a regular tarp likely wouldn't support a child or large dog that might step or climb onto it.
Here is a standard size 20x40 LoopLoc cover (rectangular ) on Amazon. It's $1160 before sales tax.
That is the basic LoopLoc cover; they make a choice of materials and grades. A typical vinyl tarp type cover does not drain, which means water collects on the top of it over the fall and winter and sits there and freezes. We had one of those basic vinyl-tarp type covers originally when we bought house #3 in the 1970s and had to pump the water off it regularly. What a PITA that was. If you let the rainwater sit there and freeze, a cheap tarp type cover won't last very long with all that weight of ice and snow sitting on it over the winter. So most people get the "mesh" type of pool cover to avoid that scenario.
But that Amazon price is without installation. Pool covers need fasteners along the perimeter of whatever the decking is made of (wood, pavers, cement, etc) in order to fasten it down tightly. So you'd probably need to pay someone to correctly install a replacement cover if you bought it yourself.
If you buy a house with a pool, the homeowners insurance company will probably want to know whether the pool cover is the "safety" type or not. Pools are one of the biggest liability hazards so they always ask about covers and what the fencing situation is and what access locks are in place and where.
Figure at least $1000, possibly between $1500 and $1800, for a typical new LoopLoc/safety cover, installed.
Automatic pool covers are not operated only only or twice a year, typically they are kept closed (covering the pool) whenever the pool is not in use during the warm months too. That's the main selling point of having an automatic cover, not just the admitted PITA job of pulling off a manual cover, spreading it out in the driveway, cleaning it off, letting it dry, rolling it up, tying it up, and storing it in your shed or garage or basement until it's needed again.
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 07-17-2019 at 03:26 PM..
expired listings 90% of the time are due to unrealistic sellers asking too much for the house. sellers don't dictate price. the market does. I don't care if you just dumped 50K into your kitchen...you ain't getting it back. ......a good agent would tend to recognize these imbeciles and decline the listing..
Oh, I agree with you on all points. And there are some agents who will try to talk to such sellers "like a Dutch uncle" (as my parents used to say) and bring them back to reality with comps. But it's also true that there are agents who will push the seller into a higher listing price so as to get the listing rather than have it go to a more realistic-priced competitive realtor. (I'm looking at you, Eric Ramsay, lol) Of course they know that it's highly unlikely to sell for that amount and in the end the seller MIGHT get something close to where it SHOULD have been priced at in the first place. Eventually.
As for declining a listing, I'd be interested to know whether (unless a property is in such bad condition that it's only fit for a teardown) that has ever been done by any of the realtors who frequent this board. Meaning turned down only because the seller had a written-in-stone listing price in their head and refused to budge -- and for no other reason for refusal. How would an agent even phrase such a refusal other than to say "I'm sorry but the current market doesn't justify anything even close to what you want to ask for the house, and so to list it would be a waste of time, energy and money for both of us" ?
I suppose that would be the polite way of saying "You are out of your mind to think you'll ever get that much for this house, and so I want nothing to do with it or you", LOL
You will need to get the pool winterized each year unless you are confident you know how to do it yourself. You'd need an air compressor to blow out the water lines, for starters.
Not an air compressor, shop vac. Use it on the exhaust side and it works great.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
