Do sellers not pay closing costs anymore in NoVa now? (Vienna: loan, houses)

[slim04]

Originally Posted by karen624

He did. He wrote up a nice little letter about us and all that. Cold, hard cash talks in this case I guess. They did not even give us a- this is the other offer, what else do you want to do to sweeten your deal option.

I'm not a real estate agent, but if I make a hard offer for anything and the seller chooses to disclose that amount to goose a higher offer from competing bids, there is a good chance I will walk away from the deal.

As a buyer, you don't necessarily want to be dragged into an auction. Unless I think the property is significantly undervalued or unique and will be different to find a replacement, I want my offer accepted, rejected, or counter-offered. I do not want, wait while I troll around for a higher bid.

So if the offer is a good one, you'll take a signficant risk to try to get just a little bit more out of me or someone else.

[karen624]

I have seen so many houses listed (in Fairfax county) that have stated in the remarks that they will be reviewing offers on a specified day- basically turning it into a bidding war right off the bat. It turns me off to a house right away, and I am not going to waste my time waiting for a week or so to see if I have the magical offer.

[kww]

Originally Posted by karen624

I have seen so many houses listed (in Fairfax county) that have stated in the remarks that they will be reviewing offers on a specified day- basically turning it into a bidding war right off the bat. It turns me off to a house right away, and I am not going to waste my time waiting for a week or so to see if I have the magical offer.

when you're scheduling 5+ showings the first day it comes on market, it's smart from a sellers perspective to inform all potential buyers that there will a cutoff to review any and all offers.

[jillybean720]

Originally Posted by karen624

Very interesting to read about the polybutylene pipes. I had not heard about that before, so will educate myself a little bit now.

I believe they stopped using poly pipe in the late '80s around here, so if the properties you're viewing are newer, it shouldn't be a concern. My townhouse was built in '86 or '87.

Originally Posted by Middlin

When I read that I remembered when we bought a TH in Fair Lakes and there was an all cash offer on the table against our traditional financing. Our realtor seeing all the child proofing in the house and the toddler running around and a baby in the Mom's arms casually mentioned that I was pregnant and wouldn't that be convenient to have all that already taken care of. The sellers ended up going with us.

Frankly, I would have your realtor play up the deployment....you never know what might work in your favor.

Yup. The house we're in now, we were competing with another offer. My realtor wrote a note about us and our situation, explaining we were looking for a nice home to start our family in, as I was pregnant at the time. In the end, the seller said our offers were very close, but he just couldn't say no to a pregnant woman (by which I assume our offer was the slightly lower one)!
I ended up giving birth ON moving day, the day right after closing. If we'd had to wait for another house instead, the move would have been much more difficult, as I would have had a new baby, and all our baby "stuff" would have been set up at our old house instead of never having been unpacked (super easy to move).

Originally Posted by karen624

They did not even give us a- this is the other offer, what else do you want to do to sweeten your deal option.

I have never, ever been told what the "other" offer is. Typically, if the seller wants to play, they just come back and say your offer's not the top bid, so you have an opportunity to adjust it if you wish, but you're doing so blindly.

[karen624]

Originally Posted by jillybean720

I believe they stopped using poly pipe in the late '80s around here, so if the properties you're viewing are newer, it shouldn't be a concern. My townhouse was built in '86 or '87.

We are looking in West Springfield or Burke, also out in Loudon County, so the Fairfax Co. houses would def. be in that time frame.

Originally Posted by kww

when you're scheduling 5+ showings the first day it comes on market, it's smart from a sellers perspective to inform all potential buyers that there will a cutoff to review any and all offers.

I understand this, but if I am a buyer coming in from out of town, trying to get things tied up in one trip, this makes things VERY difficult. Do I roll the dice on the house that won't even look at my offer for another week, or do I put in an offer on a house that will consider my offer right away, so I can get my contract ratified and all the balls in motion. It makes sense to do this if you list a house on Friday am, and say you will review all contracts on Sunday pm, but a lot of the houses I have seen have the date pushed out 10-14 days.

[lindy112]

We're putting our West Springfield house on the market in a couple of weeks. While I hope you're right about the abundance of showings and interest, we have no plans of starting a bidding war. Once the first offer comes in, we'll try to work it out then.

[shamrock847]

Originally Posted by karen624

I understand this, but if I am a buyer coming in from out of town, trying to get things tied up in one trip, this makes things VERY difficult. Do I roll the dice on the house that won't even look at my offer for another week, or do I put in an offer on a house that will consider my offer right away, so I can get my contract ratified and all the balls in motion. It makes sense to do this if you list a house on Friday am, and say you will review all contracts on Sunday pm, but a lot of the houses I have seen have the date pushed out 10-14 days.

This is easy. Submit a contract on the house that will look at the offer right away. Have your realtor communicate to them that you are interested in other properties and that you need to have a contract ratified by X or you will withdraw the offer and submit one on the other property. I've done this before and it was not a problem.

When the second house is getting close to when they will review contracts your realtor should be able to find out how much interest there is in the second house and you can decide if you even want to submit on that house. Your realtor may find out they have 5 other offers over asking price so you may decide to not even pursue the second house. If you are not getting where you want on the first and you are still interested in the second, pull back the first contract and submit one on the second house.

Worse case you lose out on both houses but that can happen whether or not one of them is waiting to review offers.

I did the out of town thing a few years ago and had to make 3 trips before we got the house we wanted, but most people I know are able to do it in one trip if they are well prepared and have a plan like the one above for which houses they are interested in submitting offers on.

[KM_W&M06]

As the OP, just thought I'd come back to my thread and let you all know that we did successfully purchase our house back in May and while we did have to pay closing costs, we got the house for about $10K under the seller's asking price.

I feel lucky that we got the first house we made an offer on considering how quickly houses around here go under contract. Thanks again to everyone for their comments!

[NovaOne]

Congratulations. Given how heated the local market has become, I am glad you were able to buy something earlier in the year. I know some people who were indecisive, tried to apply prior year tactics to current market, and ended up just wasting a lot of time while the prices have gone up and choices dwindle.

[BarqCider]

i wonder how much my moms house in the town of Vienna will sell for in about 2.5 years from now. she's finished the basement, updated bunch of stuff. i know 800k was what we were told sometime this year. i wonder if thatll go up by then.

i think her house is the only one on the street that has a finished basement too. hrm it be nice for her to retire with 500k+ cash and move to south America with that lump sum. Part of me will miss the house but then again i am sentimental about where i live. i still miss my childhood town house lol and my bedroom was the equivalent of a closet LOL.