>15,000 active listings (for sale, foreclosure, condos)

[Potential_Landlord]

Originally Posted by ReadyFreddy

My realtor called me yesterday and asked me if I'd list my other house now, please. She has a buyer she can't find a home for. They're going too quickly.

Amazing how times change. In my zip it takes less than a week for any listing to go AWC as well (unless extraordinary circumstances). I also wanted to thank Captain Bill for his website. It is an excellent search tool for non-realtors (like the 99.9% of us) Also, the t-bond market seems to really give way now, meaning higher mortgage rates are a coming. IMO this will create additional buying pressure.

[bigDwiki]

I have been watching homes go from listed to AWC within 12 hours. Its crazy. I'm thinking the buyers are foolish because you should look at MANY houses before deciding. They are signing papers the same day they look.

+1 for Bill. Many Realtors try to keep the flexMLS a secret. Glad he opens it up for us.

[ReadyFreddy]

What makes you think they haven't looked at many houses before offering on one?

[rjrcm]

Originally Posted by bigDwiki

...+1 for Bill. Many Realtors try to keep the flexMLS a secret. Glad he opens it up for us.

Just to clarify, Bill is providing an IDX (Internet Data eXchange - data interface standard for MLS data access) service. No one is trying to keep it a secret. Any Realtor can sign up for an IDX service that is willing to pay for it, including the one Bill uses. The one provided by Bill is from the same company that also provides the "real" MLS software for our local MLS and agents. As Bill said, it is essentially the same interface used by agents, but scaled down in terms of some features and the data they are allowed to publicly share.

I happen to currently use another IDX MLS interface product from a different company. It has access to all the same listings providing near real time MLS listing data. I prefer it for my marketing needs, as they also provide other capabilities that work well on my website.

[S. Chris Webb]

I just listed a two bedroom/den as a potential Short Sale last week, only allowed showings for ONE HOUR (since it has a tenant in place) and received 8 offers within 24 hours of showing - two sight-unseen, all but one at, or over list price, and had multiple other agents begging to show their clients. I believe all who showed it in that one hour made offers. If the home was vacant and showable it would likely have received at least 30 offers. It was listed well over what it would likely appraise for.

On the same day, some owner-occupant buyers come from out of state and they drove themselves all over the west Valley writing down addresses of every house they thought looked nice that had a RE sign in front of it. They gave me a list of about 25-30 properties. NOT ONE of them were actually available for purchase. All were either sold, Pending, AWC Short Sales, or rentals.

This type of local market has been this way (and continuing to become more and more a seller's market) for at least a year. It's amusing that the media is seemingly just catching on now. The only reason I can see that prices haven't been driven up dramatically is due to tight appraisals on financed buyers. If there is a shadow inventory, I'd sure like them to release it!

[ReadyFreddy]

I don't mean this snarky, I'm genuinely curious--why not list it higher in these conditions? Isn't the bank more likely to approve the short sale at a higher price? Or did you not expect to get more than one offer in that hour? I know it's hard to tell just what price people will pounce and which will miss the mark. A house near me has been a short sale on the market for a couple weeks and is not under contract, and is under $200k, so I'm curious why some are priced to fly off the shelf.

[rjrcm]

Originally Posted by ReadyFreddy

I don't mean this snarky, I'm genuinely curious--why not list it higher in these conditions?

Chris did inidicate it was listed higher, above appraisal value:

...It was listed well over what it would likely appraise for.

So it seems agents do understand that demand has improved to the point you can get away with asking for higher and still get multiple offers. I'm sure some such as your example get priced so high they have the opposite affect. It also depends on condition of the home.

Of course, if they are not cash offers, getting it to appraise at the higher pricing for financing will be difficult.

[jdahunt]

We tried to buy BAC at $3.00 back then, it wouldn't go so we ended up getting it at $3.25.....and it was all good from there..lol....we weren't able to sell at the high but did unload at $18.00....thinking of getting in it again.

[ReadyFreddy]

Originally Posted by rjrcm

Chris did inidicate it was listed higher, above appraisal value:
So it seems agents do understand that demand has improved to the point you can get away with asking for higher and still get multiple offers. I'm sure some such as your example get priced so high they have the opposite affect. It also depends on condition of the home.

Of course, if they are not cash offers, getting it to appraise at the higher pricing for financing will be difficult.

Oh good point. But if they're cash offers, no appraisal.

[S. Chris Webb]

Quote:
Originally Posted by rjrcm
Chris did inidicate it was listed higher, above appraisal value:
So it seems agents do understand that demand has improved to the point you can get away with asking for higher and still get multiple offers. I'm sure some such as your example get priced so high they have the opposite affect. It also depends on condition of the home.

Of course, if they are not cash offers, getting it to appraise at the higher pricing for financing will be difficult.

"Oh good point. But if they're cash offers, no appraisal."

Without getting into revealing confidential info about terms of the winning offer (should we ever need to find another buyer before approval) , I can tell you there were a mixture of solid cash as well as financed offers for the seller to pick from. All of the prospective buyers were also requested to be counseled by their agents prior to making their offers that the lien holders could hold out for more than offer price, and some of the offers included terms to address this. Also note that this is a short sale that the bank has previously approved the price on, so when re-activating the listing, the price was increased to reflect this. It still would have met multiple offers with an even higher price, however it's better to start at a reasonable level and have some leeway to come up should the lien holders demand it, than to start at the highest and best.