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- Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
- Path: sparky!uunet!murphy!jpradley!magpie!manes
- From: manes@magpie.nycenet.edu (Steve Manes)
- Subject: Re: Getting Ready to Sell House
- Organization: Manes and Associates, NYC
- Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 23:13:54 GMT
- Message-ID: <By54J6.444@magpie.nycenet.edu>
- X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]
- References: <1ej18mINNa20@sixgun.East.Sun.COM>
- Lines: 75
-
- Ed Green - Pixel Cruncher (egreen@east.sun.com) wrote:
- : In article D4v@magpie.nycenet.edu, manes@magpie.nycenet.edu (Steve Manes) writes:
- : >Ed Green - Pixel Cruncher (egreen@east.sun.com) wrote:
- : >
- : >: How about otherwise reasonably priced houses
- : >: whose asking price is artifically inflated 6% to cover agents' fees?
- : >
- : >This infers that owner-represented homes have asking prices 6% less
- : >than agency-represented homes, which I didn't see even once. Unless
- : >you're a naive buyer, before you make any bid on a home you've
- : >already studied what similar houses in the area have recently sold
- : >for; their asking prices and their sales prices.
- :
- : Exactly. The challenge in any negotiation is to separate the asking
- : price fluff from the real selling price. Doing your homework as you
- : describe prepares you for that. For a listed house, that's it, that's
- : what you pay. For a FSBO, that is just the starting point, there is
- : another 6% to be considered.
-
- As I said in my last post, I didn't see one whit of difference
- between the asking prices of agency-repped and seller-repped homes.
- This extra 6% bargaining margin you keep bringing up with regard to
- the latter is a straw man, Ed. If the seller knocks 6% off the
- price it's STILL 6% out of his pocket, whether or not the home is
- being represented by an agency.
-
- I also have to mention a point that should be self-evident: the
- reason why most people rep their own homes is because they want to
- maximize profits and don't want to let go of that 6% agency fee.
- Contrary to your statement, such people are, naturally, less
- flexible about being dicked down considerably in negotiation.
-
- : >Unless you're paying cash for the house, any mortgage lender will
- : >insist that the house be inspected by a licensed housing inspector
- : >prior to contract, for everything from code violations to termites
- : >to a leaky roof.
- : Not around here. My lender got a survey and appraisal, and told me I
- : had to get a termite report. That was all. I had a structrual
- : engineer ispect the house from top to bottom, and I got the seller to
- : fix several items, but none of that was required by the lender.
-
- Things are tougher in the northeast. Lenders want to make sure that the
- buyer isn't going to suddenly find himself saddled with any additional
- major expenses that might affect his/her ability to make the mortgage
- payment. It may be that such inspections are required only for older
- homes (mine was built in 1894).
-
- A sad anecdote related to this: twenty years ago a film maker
- friend of mine went in with the rest of his building's tenants and
- bought their NYC Soho loft building from the absentee landlord, who
- had driven the place into disrepair. They got an incredible deal,
- even for then. It worked out to ~$25,000 per floor. The floors were
- 10,000 square feet, some with 16 foot ceilings! Anyway, since the
- building was in such bad (but repairable) shape the tenant/buyers
- knew that no bank would lend them the money and so didn't even
- bother to apply for a mortgage. Instead, they bought it for cash,
- securing personal loans where necessary.
-
- Three weeks later, cold weather hit and the aging boiler blew up
- with such force that it knocked down the 100-foot brick chimney
- into the adjoining parking lot, demolishing twenty cars. Of course,
- the tenants hadn't gotten around to insuring the building yet
- either. The lawsuits for the destroyed cars and parking lot
- eventually cost nearly $200k to settle, which is more than they
- paid for the building. The new boiler and flue, and basement
- repairs from the subsequent fire, ran another $200k. Then there
- were attornies' fees since everyone in the world sued them,
- including each other.
-
- So I can understand a bank wanting to see thorough building
- inspections as a condition of loan.
- --
- Stephen Manes manes@magpie.nycenet.edu
- Manes and Associates/Commontech-NoHo New York, NY, USA =o&>o
-
-