On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:48:35 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


Came across a lovely word describing all the materials you find
along the way, aka "salvage", thinggummies, doohickeys, junk, 'parts',
yard sale score, "it was just sitting there with a 'Free' sign", I
could use that for something some day - "Obtainium".

Now I'm wondering if there is an antonym, for when you have too
much obtainium and are downsizing. It's still good for something, but
you have no room for it, anymore.
Dumpster
We're going to be moving, it will be smaller, some of it can find
new homes, other is just too "specialized" as to be easily "rehomed".
SMBO is wondering why we have such a big house (3600ft^2) but I remind
her that she wants a formal dining room, a large kitchen and master
bedroom, and space for a lot of tools. We really don't need five
bedrooms but one is over the garage so doesn't really count.

Basements are hard to come by here. Hell, everything is hard to come
by now. A realtor told her that there were only 27 homes worth buying
in a neighboring county (don't know about ours). Three homes went up
for sale in our neighborhood and were sold before the sign was
planted.

My son is a real estate agent in Las Vegas. Bottom line is that if you don't
put in a full asking price, cash offer with no contingencies your offer won't
make the cut. Much of it is Covid related. Most people just don't want to
sell at this time. He said that the normal 6 months worth of inventory is
down to about 2 weeks. I'm hearing the same thing about my area.
It's at least partially covid related. The other motivator is money
at less than 2%. To your point, Clark Howard on his podcast said the
60% of home sales were over the Internet. Sight unseen. That's up
from 50% last year and 40% from the year before. The buyer's attitude
is that if they don't like the house, they'll just turn around and
sell it.

I had more or less the same attitude when I bought this house in 2011.
I needed someplace to live. I was working as a contractor at the time
with some promise of permanent employment. The market in 2011 more
than sucked and I bought a foreclosure so in the worst case I thought
I'd lose less on the house than I would on the $1500/mo x 12months
that I was paying for rent, if anything. My wife was still living in
the old house because she needed to continue at her old job (that
insurance thing).
The new normal is for the seller to put a date/time in the listing stating when
all offers will be reviewed. Anyone interested puts in their offer, the seller and
listing agent sit around a table at that date/time and pick the one they like the
best.

No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

It's happening all the time these days, at least where I live and in Vegas where my
son works. Some people are submitting offers over full price, hoping to win when
that specific date/time review of all offers is done.

My son put in an offer on a different house last week. Full price, no contingencies,
pre-approved mortgage commitment letter showing about 10% down. He came in
second to the exact same offer except their mortgage commitment letter showed
20% down. 20%, 10% or 0% down *shouldn't* matter to the seller since there was a
commitment letter for more than the selling price in both cases. The fact that the
other buyer's offer looked more "solid" (?) than his, was enough for his offer to be
rejected. It was basically a toss up, so the seller had to use something to tip the
scales. He choose the one with the higher down payment.

My son just (this weekend) signed a contract to buy a house that he is going to
turn into an Airbnb. It never really even hit the market. He spoke to the listing
agent as soon as he got the alert and the agent said "Write up your offer and
I'll get it right over to the seller for his signature." (My son already owns a house
that is a full-time Airbnb and he basically hasn't had an empty night since
November 2020. It covers all his expenses and still returns some profit.)
Good deal if you can swing it. I know there a lot of those at beaches
and such. Most are through VRBO, or some such. We've rented a few
over the years. It's a whole lot better than a timeshare!

SWMBO and I stay at Airbnb's all the time now. She hates hotels. Family get-
togethers for Christmas and vacations are all at Airbnb's too. SWMBO and I
will sometimes get an Airbnb just a few hours away so we can spend the
weekend hiking in some park or going to a museum, crafts show or concert.
We recently stayed at a small-town church that has been converted to 4 Airbnb
apartments, 2 up, 2 down. Based on the outlines of the pews that could be seen
on the wainscoting, it was obvious that the bed was "on the alter". Yes, that
was a little weird. ;-)

My son's place was recently featured in a VRBO Facebook promotion.
Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com...you can list your property on multiple platforms.

Gorgeous Las Vegas home with RV parking
https://www.vrbo.com/2155063?noDates...unitId=2719599

There's a trick to this "full asking price, cash offer with no contingencies"
game. The laws, at least where he lives, heavily favor the buyer. Even though
a buyer might not put a home inspection in the contract as a contingency,
there are usually words related to "due-diligence" in the contract. Essentially,
the buyer has (typically) 48 hours to get out of the contract for any reason.
What my son did was have one of his inspector friends "on call" to be available
within 48 hours of the contract signing.

His friend inspected the house and found some issues. My son sent a repair
request to the sellers agent along with a request to extend the due-diligence
period until "both buyer and seller agree that the repair request has been fulfilled".
If the seller didn't agree to the request (he did) they could have negotiated further
or my son could have walked away. Now it's just a matter of having the repairs
done to my son's satisfaction or he can still get out of the contract. And of course
there's the final walkthrough just before closing to ensure that the property is
still the "same" as what he has contracted to buy.

I'm surprised that with a market that hot, that the seller didn't tell
him to put the offer where the sun don't shine.

The seller has already moved out and needs to sell. Obviously the selling agent
wants to close the deal, so agent-to-agent, he let my son know that he wants to
move this along.

Most of the repair issues are small enough that my son asked for $1500 off
of a $350K offer. However, one was a big one - one that it turns out the seller knew
about but didn't fully disclose. His disclosure doc had the "No" box checked for
plumbing issues but a handwritten note in the "If any Yes box is checked, please
explain" saying this:

"water leak outside seller fixed" (that's word for word, I saw the document.)

That confused both my son and the inspector, so they made sure to take a hard
look at the plumbing. When they got to the house, the main shutoff inside the
house was off. They turned it on and got no water into the house. They shut
it off to be safe and went outside to check the shut off at the street. It too was
off. The meter for the house is in between the street shut off and the inside shut
off. When they turned the street valve on, the meter started turning. :-O
Turns out that there is a leak between the street shutoff and the interior
shut-off.

When my son mentioned this to the selling agent, he was told that the seller
had already arranged for the leak to be repaired, not expecting the house to
sell immediately upon listing. We'll see. My son stipulated in the repair request
that the repair was to be done by a licensed contractor. He's trying to avoid a
a duct tape fix that's going to fail right after he closes. As of now, we don't
know if it's as simple as a leak in the irrigation system or if the driveway/
front yard needs to be ripped up.

Whatever they tear up has to be returned to at least the same condition as what
my son signed the contract for. If it's not, he will negotiate further or walk.


When we sold our previous house, we sold with as a purchased house
with a one-year lease. I had my attorney draw up the contract such
that they bought the house but that were deferring full payment for a
year (for a price $2500 x 12). An issue came up with a retaining wall
(just a pile of boulders, really) washing down. They wanted to back
out but I reminded the agent that we had a contract and that they'd
already bought the house. We ended up fixing it, just as it was
before (no requested improvements). Essentially, we had a "forever"
warranty on it because it had come down once before after we were in a
couple of crossfire hurricanes. ;-)
It's a tough market right now, no matter where you live. It helps if you know how
the game is played.
There is *so* much building around here right now that when the next
bubble bursts it's going to make 2008-2012 look like a picnic in the
park. I'm sure glad that I've already burned my mortgage.

I've got a small low-interest HELOC left on my house that I could pay off
right now if I wanted to, but I'm making more on my investments than I'm
paying on the loan. SWMBO's birthday is coming up in a few months so
I'm going to have her sit down at the computer and click the button to transfer
the payoff amount first thing that morning. That'll make her happy. ;-)