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$782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

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121–130 of 209 posts

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#121
This is absurd but not quite as absurd as the headline makes it out to be.

FTA:

Over-asking sales are at least partly the result of agents’ sleight of hand. It’s become common strategy to list homes under their market value in order to entice Silicon Valley buyers; they are all too willing to fight over the few houses available in this chronically tight market [...] Given prices to the north, spending less than $2.5 million for a house in Sunnyvale on a large lot — about 13,000 square feet — “wasn’t a wrong move,” Kalkat said.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#122

In France, there's no such thing as paying over the ask price. You are forced to sell to the first buyer who offers to pay the ask price. I suspect that this is done to prevent prices from rising too quickly.

OK, but you have to understand the dynamic in this neighborhood. I also live about 1 mile from the new Apple campus, in a slightly different, though very similar, Sunnyvale neighborhood.

You prep your house to sell by getting all inspections done ahead of time and staging it reasonably for showing. Agent-only open house tours are on Tuesday in my neighborhood. Buyers' agents make a short list of properties worth visiting with their clients. Open house on Saturday or Sunday, take offers the following Wednesday or Thursday. Expect 10+ offers from pre-qualified buyers. High bidder takes it, assuming they have a clean offer and financing.

If any house in this neighborhood sits on the market for more than two weeks, everyone wonders what is wrong with it.

As a seller, though, it is a one-way trap door. If I sold today, I'd never be moving back into the same neighborhood.

Someone below said to the effect that is is a push-in bought for the land. That happens, but not so much in this neighborhood. The houses were built in the 1960's and are well constructed. There are older homes in some areas that are smaller that are the push-in candidates.

BTW -- I chatted with a neighbor that was one of the original buyers on my street in 1961. The four bedroom floor plans sold for $21,000. $22,000 if you wanted insulation in the walls. Oooof

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#123
post #84

Greetings from New York. You people are fucking insane, for the love of God please consider building some apartment buildings. Cheers.

Apartments wont change the dynamics of SFH in the South Bay/Peninsula given local zoning rules. The main driver of price seem to be the local schools.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#124
post #59

> The four-bed, two-bath house — less than 2,000 square feet — listed for $1,688,000 and sold for $2,470,000. Using a ballpark figure of $500/mo per $100K of house, this comes out to $12,500/mo. That's $150K/year, mostly after tax (there's a bit of a deduction for interest but let's ignore that for now). Using the standard 30% rule, that means you should have a gross income of about $500K. What I'm questioning is, ho…

a lot of buyers are coming in with 500k+ of equity, sometimes over a million dollars, sometimes ALL CASH because they liquidated a boatload of stock and are now upgrading their living situation. your mortgage numbers are way higher than reality. another concern is property taxes, but even at 2.5M, that's less than 30k/year in property taxes -- a working power couple or one single high earner can easily pay that. and…

I'm not sure if its accurate, but https://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/1129-Prunelle-Ct-94087/h... lists the property tax for last year at 1504$?

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#126

In France, there's no such thing as paying over the ask price. You are forced to sell to the first buyer who offers to pay the ask price. I suspect that this is done to prevent prices from rising too quickly.

OK, but you have to understand the dynamic in this neighborhood. I also live about 1 mile from the new Apple campus, in a slightly different, though very similar, Sunnyvale neighborhood. You prep your house to sell by getting all inspections done ahead of time and staging it reasonably for showing. Agent-only open house tours are on Tuesday in my neighborhood. Buyers' agents make a short list of properties worth visi…

It's still a huge change in real value vs today, but for accuracy, 22000 1961 dollars is 181000 2017 dollars.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#127
post #84

Greetings from New York. You people are fucking insane, for the love of God please consider building some apartment buildings. Cheers.

Someone who wants a house is not really willing to have an apartment. Someone who is ready to put this amount of money in a house is definitely not willing to get an apartment.

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#128

It's a 13k lot a mile from Apples new campus. The person who bought it knows it's potential. Even if you make 10% of that initial investment you're still doing amazing.

There are an incredible number of Apple employees worth tens of millions of dollars that would love to not commute. The potential to rebuild a monster house on this lot next to Apple is definitely quite valuable. Location, location, location.

You do know there is more than one company in the US right?

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#129
post #7

Yes South Bay is so overpriced right now it’s ridiculous. Keep in mind that 5 years ago that same house would have sold for 650k and even then people would have been complaining that’s it was way overpriced. One things certain, east bay across the 84 is still under a million at the moment. I suspect that will change soon.

I've been closely tracking Bay Area real estate for the last 7 years, and assuming it was kept in good condition (original owners), 5 years ago it would've sold for over $1m. It has 4 bedrooms, is in an amazing school district, and in a generally good location.

The extent of the upgrades to it make the sale price a little high, but somewhat inline with pricing in similar neighbourhoods across the bay, e.g. https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/15561231_zpid/37.49241...

Re: $782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are an incredible number of Apple employees worth tens of millions of dollars that would love to not commute. The potential to rebuild a monster house on this lot next to Apple is definitely quite valuable. Location, location, location.

>"There are an incredible number of Apple employees worth tens of millions of dollars that would love to not commute" Is there really? Can you quantify what an "incredible number of employees" is here? Thousands, 10s of thousands? Do you have a citation for that statement? Why would so many people worth 10s of millions of dollar be competing for the same properties/ Also why are so many people worth 10s of millions o…

I don't know how much jobs Apple has now but the new Campus is "huge". Like really gigantic. Apple is a wealthy tech company and even if it is not paying high salaries, I expect lots of employees have made a killing from stock options in the last few years.
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