171–180 of 209 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or 6-7 smaller houses and sell them for ~$1m each.
Not on a 13k square foot lot! But yeah, that has happened elsewhere in the Bay Area. (Zoning tends to prevent it, though, so there's an element of regulatory arbitrage.)
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.
They aren't paying that much for the house. They're paying that much because it's located in a good area. They'll knock it down and built a brand spanking new house and sell that for a profit. This happens every day in hot real estate markets
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You can't build houses without land to build on, and desirable land makes up most of the price of desirable housing.
I don't think of Sweden as a country that lacks land. Population of Sweden is comparable to that of Bay Area but seriously. I imagine if you could just go and buy a home in "the next suburb by the road" really affordably, it would deflate prices for most desirable places too.
Sure there is land and there are plenty of places where you can buy a nice house for less than, say, $100k. However none of those places are within a one hour commute of where any jobs are.
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…
In suburban long island NY, plenty of homes sit on the market for months, in good school districts, near halfway decent jobs.
I can't believe it, but I guess I should, that Sunnyvale has so many high paying jobs and so little land that buyers are swarming like bees to a hive.
This is a market that literally 99.3% of the world is priced out of.
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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.
CA has a state wide law that prohibits reassessment unless there is a change of ownership or substantial renovation. Property taxes growth is capped (I think at 2% or inflation, whichever is less). There are many houses that were bought in the 60s or 70s that pay peanuts in taxes. This is partly (or primarily depending on who you ask...) why the CA school system so screwed up.
Greetings from New York. You people are fucking insane, for the love of God please consider building some apartment buildings. Cheers.
If the Zillow data is correct, it looks like it's being taxed at a value of only $110k, ~60% of the original purchase price in 2017 dollars (from comment below). [1]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197... [1]https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/fsba,fsbo_lt/19540393_...
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.
If experience has taught us nothing (and it hasn't [1]), it's that price controls simply don't work in the long term. That being said, capital controls are an entirely different beast. I've seen a variety of property systems in different parts of the world. In Sydney and Melbourne for example, it's hard to work out what anything will cost because the majority of properties are sold at auction. If there's a listed pri…
re Sydney and Melbourne (and Australia in general)
FIRB is easily circumvented (just buy properties using a company structure, no need to tell FIRB now)
Also regarding the $800k overage paid, this kind of thing has been happening in Australian east coast cities for a decade, due to our govt refusal to enact Anti Money Laundering funds transfer reporting rules for accountants, lawyers and real estate agents.
Australian govt of both flavours review the AML reporting rules every 2 years since 2006 but never actually change it to include realestate.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/09/us-cracks-down-on-r...
So now I live in Melbourne's east in a 1930's house last renovated in 1980 that sold for $2.2 million earlier this year and I rent it for $650 a week.
Previous owners bought it for $1.1 million 8 years earlier.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4867622/Melbourne-ag...
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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…
Interesting. I've heard people talk a lot about foreign all-cash buyers coming in and driving up prices. But if a non-contingent cash offer for asking price cannot be refused, then why would prices be driven up? Wouldn't these buyers just offer the asking price and save hundreds of thousands? I'm curious to know more about how the non-discrimination laws apply here, since I know there definitely are laws, but if they…
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Is that really so bad? Here in CT I payed 1.2k for studio with similar amenities. A mid-level developer making 75k +-20k is normal here. A mid-level developer making 170k +-20k is normal there. You obviously lose some disposable income, but in exchange you're in Sunnyvale. The job market there makes CT's look like a joke and for growth as far as income is concerned in incredibly limited in most parts of CT compared t…
170-200 is not normal for mid level when average is 150 despite what people like about.
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No, it just reverses the dynamics: instead of starting out low to get people into the door, you start with a list price that's too high. If the bids you're getting are always far below your asking price, you know the free market isn't willing to cough up what you want, and you lower the price to something that is more in range. If your initial asking price is $1MM and all bids are around $800K, consider dropping the…
So why is this better, exactly? Seems like it just takes longer to accomplish the same goal (finding FMV). Buyers are still not guaranteed their offer will be accepted unless they gratuitously overpay (by offering list price).
What usually happens though, is that you determine an estimated FMV (eFMV) based on recently sold properties in the neighborhood that are similar in size. Experienced realtors are usually quite good at this. You can add a factor to the eFMV to get your list price. As a seller, in the worst case, you may have to drop your list price to your eFMV. Best case, you get a nice bonus. When there are multiple bidders around your eFMV, but under listing, you have some leverage to get a higher bid. Let's assume your eFMV is 850K. "Look, I have a bid of 850k. You're at 825k. My list price is 900K, but if you bid 875k now, it's yours guaranteed." It looks like a steal in the buyers eyes ("25k below list price!") and you get a nice 25k bonus over the eFMV.
As a buyer, this silent "list price is always accepted" rule, gives you the ability to properly filter properties because the list price functions as a cap. This saves both buyer and seller time because you're not chasing unreachable properties. You can also get a realtor to get your own estimated FMV for the property that looks interesting. It's up to you to decide if the certainty of the buy is worth the difference between list price and your eFMV. If not, you can always bid something lower, closer to your eFMV but with the possibility that someone outbids you.
The process usually is really fast, because realtors are good at estimating a FMV, most sellers realize they shouldn't expect a huge premium over that estimate and buyers accept a premium for the certainty of an immediate sale.