141–150 of 209 posts
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No, you people don't get it. That house is on a large lot. You could knock it down, build a much bigger house for a 1 million and have a 4-5 million dollar house for 3.5 million. it's a good deal.
I do get that, 2.5M for that plot is still a large amount of money. The point is that even a 3.5M for the new house will be a lot, but by virtue of it's location and salaries at Apple it's justifiable
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.
The USA is like that as well. If you receive a cash offer with no contingencies for your asking price then you can't refuse. This is specifically to prevent discrimination against minorities. In most real world transactions there's some back / forth with the lawyers about details (ex: " We want your ugly drapes! ") as well as non-cash considerations. A seller may accept a lower cash offer over a higher mortgage based…
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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$?
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a lot of buyers are coming in with 500k+ of equity, sometimes over a million dollars, sometimes ALL CASH because they liquidated a boatload of stock and are now upgrading their living situation. your mortgage numbers are way higher than reality. another concern is property taxes, but even at 2.5M, that's less than 30k/year in property taxes -- a working power couple or one single high earner can easily pay that. and…
I'm not sure if its accurate, but https://www.redfin.com/CA/Sunnyvale/1129-Prunelle-Ct-94087/h... lists the property tax for last year at 1504$?
Interestingly, the Santa Clara county tax collectors will take several months to reappraise the property, and then they'll send a supplemental tax bill to cover the difference between the $125/month the prior owners were paying and the $2.6k/month the new owners will be paying. It's frustrating they don't just assess taxes correctly from the beginning, but they do things old school over there.
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You can, with a modicum of effort, learn the market as well or better than a real estate agent. You're only interested in a small slice of the houses that are on the market (at least in the Bay Area, supply is very low here). It's worth going to open houses, looking at asking prices, and then following up on what happened to that property. Spend at least 6 months getting to know the market for the neighborhoods and t…
>You can, with a modicum of effort, learn the market as well or better than a real estate agent This is the sort of reasoning that people say that pay for the used car salesman's boat. You are going to buy, what, 5 houses in your life? If you're a big mover. Real estate agents spend their entire life doing the thing you do once every couple of years at most. Why do you think you'd be better than them? This is like sa…
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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.
Yes they have a new campus and yes Apple is rich but that does not mean their employees are rich. How do you imagine employees "made a killing"? Do you think that Apple just hands out stock grants to everyone? Company stock is an asset like anything else, why would would they just be giving it away?
Apple new campus is both huge and the "flagship". It means Apple top employees will work from there. It has a 12,000 employee capacity. There will be hundreds or maybe thousands of top executives, top managers and high-grade engineers. I'm pretty sure the compensation for those is very high.
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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$?
That's a pretty good tax bill for a house assessed at $150,000, which to me suggests that the neighborhood hasn't been reassessed since it was built. I bet that won't last much longer.
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Usually, you try to base it on the recent sales of similar properties nearby. Sale data is more-or-less public information, and there are good aggregators: https://www.meilleursagents.com/prix-immobilier/paris-75000/
I'm curious if the population generally thinks this is a reasonable situation. I can easily imagine a 25% difference in valuation of two properties in the same area with the same number of bedrooms, the same age, same space, and nominally the same amenities. I can also imagine a 25% difference based on some newly opened restaurants, new bus routes, etc., that will not be reflected in historical data. There is also an…
It is a given that the price will be very different depending on the state of the property, the quality of the building and its era (1900-1930 flats command significantly higher prices than 1970-1980), whether it's a narrow alley or a large boulevard, whether it has windows on only one side or both sides, whether there's a window in the kitchen and bathroom, and whether part of the building belongs to the public housing agency (among many others). After a while, you start to get a pretty good intuition of how high a property will sell above or below the average.
Another thing about subjective experience is some properties fit certain lifestyles and will be priced accordingly. A flat in the Bastille area (lots of bars, restaurants and night clubs) appeals to people who would pay for the privilege a bonus that a boring father of two (like me) wouldn't consider. Conversely, having an address in the Quartier Latin makes it easier to enter the top high schools, so tiny one-bedroom flats sell surprisingly high (and are then rented out to university students for a far lower price than the purchase price would suggest).
Working at a huge tech company like Google or Facebook is attractive to me, but not enough to justify spending $2.5M on a smaller house, or 12x more per square foot. And this is just in Phoenix. I know there are other places with tech jobs and much lower cost of living, or better income-to-COL ratios.