UPDATE: Who has six visits to a house for sale they don't want to pay for??

[WeCantWait]

I'm just curious, I really just am.

I am so miffed. My house is listed at 130K less than current building costs and 105K less than the current assessed value.

Now, these people visited the house when we initially put it up for sale in September (it was for sale 3 weeks), they visited the house FOUR times for SIX hours, and just wouldn't come to an even reasonable sum in their offer.

Well, we just put the house back on the market three weeks ago & guess what, THEY'RE BACK! Apparently this house is the only house they've found that fits their needs. They have now seen it two more times and the only comment is, it's over-priced.... I'm looking around, and it's not over-priced by any stretch.

They initially spent six hours in the house & I have no idea how many hours this week, I'm just annoyed. I'm glad I have a realtor because I won't use the adjectives I used with her (we're friends)

Meanwhile our realtor has another person coming to look at the house that is strongly motivated.

Who knows, maybe this new person will come through and save me from this first family... why are they coming back and still complaining about my price? If they don't like it, find something else they feel is a "good deal"

I'm SO miffed...

Wow can I relate to this. I have only read your first post but I wanted to share my experience with you. The last time we sold a house, we had a couple who came to see it ten times!!! It was the most frustrating experience. Without going into all of the details, they thought we were desperate, we were already living in our new home when we put the first one on the market. We were not deperate and had no intention on selling for less than the house was worth. What finally happened with us is that another family came and fell in love with the house. They offered us the asking price. Then the two of them went into a bidding war. The first couple wound up bidding ten thousand more than the second. We wound up accepting the lower offer because the terms were better for us. LOL

So after all of the headaches that couple put us through, in essence they were responsible for us getting MORE money for our home and they lost out.

Best of luck to you, hang in.

 

[chris1gill]

Wow can I relate to this. I have only read your first post but I wanted to share my experience with you. The last time we sold a house, we had a couple who came to see it ten times!!! It was the most frustrating experience. Without going into all of the details, they thought we were desperate, we were already living in our new home when we put the first one on the market. We were not deperate and had no intention on selling for less than the house was worth. What finally happened with us is that another family came and fell in love with the house. They offered us the asking price. Then the two of them went into a bidding war. The first couple wound up bidding ten thousand more than the second. We wound up accepting the lower offer because the terms were better for us. LOL

So after all of the headaches that couple put us through, in essence they were responsible for us getting MORE money for our home and they lost out.

Best of luck to you, hang in.

Oh My God! 7 & 10 times you guys?? Are you kidding?

WeCantWait, your situation is so similar to ours, except we don't have that second buyer yet... No worries, at some point we will. I'm sure our realtor is dealing with this on her own because she knows not to bother us with all the antics of this family again & we put it in writing (I guess that was the key).

I actually suspect the land will sell before the house, but that's just my best guess.. we have to wait for the ground to warm a little before continuing with all the soil samples needed under the subdivision plan that's been drafted....

I thought our story was bad, but some of these stories are just worse What is wrong with some people???

 

[barkley]

Thanks Barkley,

It has occurred to me to email local agents from surrounding counties since our house is rather unique and would work well for anyone that had extended family or a large family... I've asked if my agent would do this (she hasn't). She's taken pictures, but another realtor I spoke with said they were really too dark.... I've been wanting to advertise it in area's other than our town.

My agent happens to be my friend, that's more than a double edge sword at this point, but I can't let her go. I know it's business, but she's been very helpful in a lot of regards, and I owe her... so I hope she comes through somehow. Maybe I'll talk to her about advertising again (she doesn't see the need for it, as it's usually ineffective she says)

Since your brother sold so low, did he lose money on the house, or had he owned it long enough that that wasn't an issue?

Thanks!

he owned it long enuf he's still making money but it's killing him when he thinks about how much he could have made if he sold it last year (house prices in that town have gone down 28% since we sold in '06). his fear was that because most of the resale market gets listed in april he was going to see allot more competition in coming weeks and allot of sellers with alot of equity are realy lowering prices because they see the market getting worse there instead of better( lots of boomers who want to get as much of their equity out as possible since they thought of it as their retirement nest egg ). another issue that's coming into play is one of the big attractions to that area was the schools and the community resources-and since california lets you get your property taxes adjusted down if your home loses value from when you bought it, the tax revenue has dropped dramaticly such that they are closing schools left and right, slashing services and eliminating allot of the after school/summer vacation stuff that kept the kids out of trouble (big commuter place-and when those services end up getting slashed the kids end up 'latch keys' and get into trouble-juvinile crimes on the upswing and the insurance agencies are taking note and increasing rates).

for him it was 'a bird in the hand'.

btw- our 'psycho buyers'-one of the things they loved about our place was that when they came to see it there had been torrential rain and ours was the only place without standing water in the back yard. well, that was due to some stunning landscaping that incorperated a drainage system. when we last drove by there (before we moved out of state) they had pulled out all the landscaping in the back side yard and poured concrete so they could use it for parking their 'toys' (atvs, boats, midget race cars). it looked like they literaly just poured concrete over the existing dirt so i'm thinking the cheaped out on retaining the drainage-so with the rains they've had i have to suspect that they are now dealing with not only standing water in the back yard but in all of the rooms adjacent to that area (one of the neighbors tried to warn them but they said 'the sellers told us they never had problems with flooding so it's not a problem'-um, yeah but that's because we had a drainage system!!!!!).

 

[castleview]

Honestly, it sounds like you don't want to sell to them anyway. When one party drives another crazy enough to create resentment, it doesn't bode well for any sort of transaction. I would really put my foot down in the hopes that they go away. (Of course, I'm basing this worthless advice on the assumption that you don't have to sell and can hold the house.)

Good luck!

I agree with this - this would be a volatile closing. We looked for our second house during a seller's market. We did lowball one homeowner by about $30,000 - the house was overpriced and in the end he got closer to our offer. They said "no", we said "fine, we'll think it over". But then they added "you could have the shack down the street for that offer" - well, guess who doesn't want to deal with you.

About two weeks later, we got a call from their realtor because they incorrectly listed as city water instead of well water and their buyer backed out. We still said "no" and ended up getting a LOT more house and yard for about $20,000 more than he was asking. What goes around comes around!

Hang in there and pretend these people don't exist.

 

[suzimar57]

these "lookee-loo's" are sounding like potential squatters to me....

 

[WeCantWait]

We sold my mother's house after she died a few years ago to a man and wife, the wife's sister, the sister's best friend and the best friend's sister. Weird...

Anyway - my youngest brother was still living there. The asked for HIS DOG in their offer.... He obviously said no and then they asked to take $1,000 of the price of the house because they thought he came with it....No again.

THEN - 30 days before they were closing on the house they asked to be let in so they could measure some rooms to change out the flooring and complained that the house wasn't empty.

THEN - during the walkthrough 1 day before the closing my brother had the last few pieces of his furniture in the garage which he was going to unload that afternoon when he came with a truck. He got there and his stuff was gone! He found it in the basement... they had taken all his furniture out and put it in the basement - they were then mad after the closing when "their stuff" was taken

Like I said before - people are morons....

My Goodness!! All I keep thinking about while reading this is... Your poor neighbors who are now living next to these nuts. Who would think a dog is included in a house sale??? Whoa that's just frightening.

 

[chris1gill]

these "lookee-loo's" are sounding like potential squatters to me....

Thankfully we have a wicked good security system in there, otherwise I might tend to agree with you! We know when the doors are opened, screens pulled out, everything we can see is right online at our fingertips.... LOVE THAT! Course I hated paying for that system, but it's come in handy now! And, it's hooked up to a central system, so anyone that does try to get in there without authorization, it won't be for long...

 

[chris1gill]

he owned it long enuf he's still making money but it's killing him when he thinks about how much he could have made if he sold it last year (house prices in that town have gone down 28% since we sold in '06). his fear was that because most of the resale market gets listed in april he was going to see allot more competition in coming weeks and allot of sellers with alot of equity are realy lowering prices because they see the market getting worse there instead of better( lots of boomers who want to get as much of their equity out as possible since they thought of it as their retirement nest egg ). another issue that's coming into play is one of the big attractions to that area was the schools and the community resources-and since california lets you get your property taxes adjusted down if your home loses value from when you bought it, the tax revenue has dropped dramaticly such that they are closing schools left and right, slashing services and eliminating allot of the after school/summer vacation stuff that kept the kids out of trouble (big commuter place-and when those services end up getting slashed the kids end up 'latch keys' and get into trouble-juvinile crimes on the upswing and the insurance agencies are taking note and increasing rates).

for him it was 'a bird in the hand'.

btw- our 'psycho buyers'-one of the things they loved about our place was that when they came to see it there had been torrential rain and ours was the only place without standing water in the back yard. well, that was due to some stunning landscaping that incorperated a drainage system. when we last drove by there (before we moved out of state) they had pulled out all the landscaping in the back side yard and poured concrete so they could use it for parking their 'toys' (atvs, boats, midget race cars). it looked like they literaly just poured concrete over the existing dirt so i'm thinking the cheaped out on retaining the drainage-so with the rains they've had i have to suspect that they are now dealing with not only standing water in the back yard but in all of the rooms adjacent to that area (one of the neighbors tried to warn them but they said 'the sellers told us they never had problems with flooding so it's not a problem'-um, yeah but that's because we had a drainage system!!!!!).

Well, it's great news he actually made a small profit... we're looking at breaking even, if we can't do that, we won't sell. And when I say breaking even, I mean at the discounted building price on a free lot.... so we are 105K less than our recent Comp. (which is now 225K less than the highest comp) Course the house is more $$ and larger than most, so we can expect to wait it out anyhow...

About the people who bought your house were they nuts??? Did they not understand the drainage aspect of it all?? We did the same type of thing for drainage, our lot will never have standing water on it.... even with 13" of rain over one weekend, we had nothing at all inside the house, and nothing standing outside.... it was good to see!

 

[Regina]

The family that eventually bought our house looked at it 7 times!!! I told the Realtor that they "need to stop visiting the house". I wondered if they were going to have mail delivered there!

We moved out of our house last May. We're only 10 minutes away from it, so we'd go back to mow the lawn, make sure everything was clean, etc.

One day I noticed a box on the front porch. That's when I discovered the buyers not only were having their mail delivered to our house prior to closing, their DD ordered something and had it shipped there.

What aggravated me was they never asked if it would be alright.

 

[chris1gill]

We moved out of our house last May. We're only 10 minutes away from it, so we'd go back to mow the lawn, make sure everything was clean, etc.

One day I noticed a box on the front porch. That's when I discovered the buyers not only were having their mail delivered to our house prior to closing, their DD ordered something and had it shipped there.

What aggravated me was they never asked if it would be alright.

That's a little funny, put that under "what were they thinking!" They could have totally lost their mail or package?

 

[The Mystery Machine]

You are a brave, brave woman.

Good luck.

OMG, you are a very trusting woman!!!

Yes...

Well DH went and did a top to bottom showing and the house looks like it needs more work than we want to afford.

We did have a rule "one thing" major to do was the limit.
Bummer.....

The thing is, I loved the layout and it would fit our stuff.

OK...pity party is over. Back to the drawing board for looking.

 

[bettyann29]

I havent read thru any of the posts except your initial one so not sure if there is an update or not but just wanted to say thats crazy..* 6 times??I can understand 2 maybe 3 times..* of course the initial time, secondly maybe to relook around and make sure of things..* maybe not looking at every single detail on the first round and MAYBE even a third time if they were going to buy and needed to get measurements, etc..* but if they werent even gonna buy than one time should be enough...We just bought our home 2 yrs ago.. this was the 3rd house we looked at and we knew right then that this was the one we wanted.. we even looked at a few others after this one to make sure this was what we wanted and at the end, we knew this was THE ONE..* I didnt have to come back a second time to know that..

 

[chris1gill]

We have a little bitty update, we had a normal family come through our house! Actually we had two of them. The house was just too big for one family. I guess they were just overwhelmed with the amount of space and there were only 3 of them.... which is odd since they knew the house was 4200 square feet, and every house has a basement & our basement is 3300 square feet...

Anyhow, that didn't work out, but today's went very well! I'm a little hopeful.

The house is everything the buyer's are looking for. It has a large basement, an in home business and an inlaw, they may need an inlaw in a few years, so it's a nice to have for them.

Their realtor has said of the six homes they've visited ours was by far the nicest & should we get any offers, to please let them know as soon as possible.

They do not have another house they have to sell....

Our pricing is in the ballpark & there was even the flat back yard they wanted for a pool... we are one of very few homes that even come close to fitting this bill..... so I'm really hoping these people work out nicely for us! Apparently they don't need 6 or 8 visits it would seem LOL...

We have a realtor caravan coming through Thursday as well, so that might provide feedback as well

All good things going on right now...

 

[Linzybrooke]

Sending good vibes that this one works out!

 

[Piglets Mommy]

Oh That's great news!!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Wishing you good luck....

 

[SomePixiedust]

Good Luck

 

[chris1gill]

Thank YOU everyone!! Keep that pixie dust rolling, sounds very promising! Coincidentally, DH will be down at the house all week long for work, so his timing may be impeccable should they want to work a deal, see the electronics and their workings & such....

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Praying the good family gives an offer!!!

 

[PaulaSue]

Great update!

We just had a second showing tonight. They were here for over 40 minutes. We are hoping.