Now is a great time to buy a house. Prices are falling, and so are mortgage rates. Millions of houses are for sale, and sellers are getting anxious.
That’s one way of looking at it.
Alternatively, you could say: This is a bad time to buy a house. Prices might be lower in a few months. Same with mortgage rates. With more than 4 million houses on the market nationally, and more being added daily, sellers are bound to become desperate. Why not wait them out?
In many places, it’s a buyer’s market in real estate, with sellers outnumbering potential purchasers. The resulting downward push on prices makes buyers happy. But it complicates matters for buyers, too. In some markets, there are too many choices to sort through. Even more bewildering, buyers wonder if they should wait a few months.
If you find the right house at the right price, buy it
If you’re serious about buying a house, this is both the first step and the final goal. To put it more precisely, you have to decide whether you will actively shop and then negotiate a fair deal, or if you’ll just passively browse houses, hoping to stumble on a steal.
You’re more likely to succeed with the active approach instead of waiting (possibly in vain) for prices to fall further. You can’t predict when the local market will hit bottom. Even if prices do fall, someone could buy your favorite house out from under you.
Put technology and a buyer’s agent to good use
Cool technological innovations are popping up on real estate Web sites practically every week. Among the most useful are valuation tools. Zillow has the best known of these called the “Zestimate,” which is a computer-generated estimate of a house’s market value. Bankrate.com is a content partner with Zillow.com.
The Homekeys site allows users to find estimated market values and to search for listings with aggressively competitive asking prices. Homekeys operates only in Florida, whereas Zillow has nationwide coverage.
Buyers can start out by playing around with Web sites such as Homekeys, Zillow and Realtor.com, just to find out how much they can learn about the houses in their target neighborhoods. Focus on finding faster ways to weed out the houses you’re not interested in — because they don’t fit your criteria for asking price, size, neighborhood or amenities.
If you find a house you like, ask the agent to perform a comparative market analysis — basically, to do what Zillow does, but with the addition of human judgment. Do your own analysis online, using Zillow, Homekeys or a similar site if you can find one. Compare your research with your agent’s. If they corroborate each other, fine. If something seems amiss, find out why. (An experienced agent is almost surely more accurate than Zillow.)
Negotiate effectively
Right now there’s more room for negotiation in most housing markets because the sales pace slows in autumn, and prices have been falling. But buyers need to be careful to avoid the temptation to toss out lowball offers, because sellers won’t negotiate if they feel insulted.
You have to be able to defend that offer as much as the seller has to be able to defend the asking price. If you’re not making a full-price offer, it’s not enough to pull a number out of the air. You should be able to show that this neighborhood has 20 comparable homes for sale, and, although I like your property, it’s priced 6 percent above the other properties. That gives you a better footing for establishing an objective and reasonable negotiation.
Don’t just negotiate with the seller. Most people think that only sellers pay commissions. They think that buyers are being serviced for free. Most people are not yet aware that there is a commission component reserved for the buyer’s agent. And that, too, just like the seller’s commission, is negotiable.
How so? Some buyer’s agents are willing to rebate a portion of their commission back to the buyer at closing.
Avoid gimmicks
You’re shopping for a house, not for a Caribbean cruise or a car lease. Recently The New York Times reported on a condo seller who was offering to give the buyer a year’s use of a leased Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan.
You can find all sorts of gimmicky incentives from condo sellers. They offer flat-screen TVs or weekends at vacation homes, or more creative inducements. This has nothing to do with the transaction at hand. If there’s an incentive, make sure it has something to do with the dwelling — upgraded countertops, decorating allowances, payment of mortgage closing costs, that sort of thing. If they’re willing to subsidize it with a $500 TV, ask for $500 off the asking price.
Magic loans is another gimmick to avoid. This is the time to avoid mortgages such as pay-option ARMs and interest-only loans. If you can’t afford it with a more mainstream loan, such as a 30-year fixed or a 5/1 ARM, you can’t afford it. Not in this market, where house values could drop and mortgage rates are almost sure to rise.
|
|
BUY 2 GET 1 FREE – A Doll’s House: A New Version by Frank McGuinness (Faber pl.. $5.99 |
|
|
How to Buy a House in California NEW by Ralph Warner $29.52 |
|
|
JERRY CLOWER wanna buy a possum 7″ promo b/w house i live in (mca40599) us mca 1 $11.62 |
|
|
What to Say to Buy/Sell Houses Plus Darcy and Jerome Make a Mint Marketing $19.99 |
|
|
Cuisinart DCC-RWF1 Replacement Coffeemaker Water Filters, Set of 2 $4.45 Cuisinart DCC-RWF Coffee Water Filter Replacement… |
|
|
Whirlpool PUR Side by Side Refrigerator Push Button Cyst Reducing Water Filter … |
|
|
Cuisinart DCC-RWF-6PK Charcoal Water Filters, 2 Year Supply, Includes 6 DCC-RWF packages. 2 Filters $30.76 The Cuisinart DCC-RWF-6PK Charcoal Water Filters, 2 Year Supply, Includes 6 DCC-RWF packages. 2 Filters Per Package a Total of Twelve [12] Filters. fits models BC-00PC2 CBC-00 CBC-002 CBC-00BJ2 CBC-00BWBJ CBC-00BWPC CBC-00PC2 CBC-00PC4 CBC-00PC5 CBC-00SA CBC-00SA2 CBC-00SA3 CBC-00WPC CBC-4400 COD-400PC DCC-100 DCC-1000 DCC-1100 DCC-1200 DCC-1400 DCC-15BKBJ1 DCC-15WBJ DCC-200 DCC-2000 DCC-2200 DCC-… |
|
|
Pale Flower (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] $19.49 Studio: Image/sphe Release Date: 05/17/2011 Run time: 93 minutes… |
Tags: finding a home · homekeys · house · property · real estate · zillowNo Comments
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.