Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 209 posts

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

#71

Post by trhway »

>The property is one of more than 50 South Bay homes that sold in the last month for at least $200,000 above the listing price. More than half of those deals were made in Sunnyvale. Others were made in Cupertino, Saratoga and West San Jose

as they mentioned this house is close to that humongous Apple new campus, and the mentioned areas - too. Given the current traffic and what it can become near that campus, one can understandably want to live closer, especially given the current fashion for the biking, walking, etc.

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

#72

Post by danmaz74 »

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #34
victorNicollet wrote: post #13

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.

Can you just overprice it and let bidders fight on lower than asking? Essentially the same thing, but with different psychology. I wonder how it would play out differently.

I don't know about France, but that's how it works in Italy. People ask what the maximum they think they could get, then buyers asks for discounts or the price is lowered when no buyers show up.

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

#73

Post by victorNicollet »

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #34
victorNicollet wrote: post #13

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.

Can you just overprice it and let bidders fight on lower than asking? Essentially the same thing, but with different psychology. I wonder how it would play out differently.

This might be the case for very high-end houses and flats, but I don't have a lot of experience with those.

For mainstream properties, from my experience the market is saturated with people who price above market rates and would rather wait for months than accept a significantly lower price. If you see something that you might consider buying with a 20% discount, you usually don't bother visiting the place. This likely drowns out the people who are trying to set up auctions by setting a very high ask price.

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

#75

Post by IncRnd »

habosa wrote: post #5

Aside: I don't think it should be legal to not accept the asking price for a home. With any other thing I want to buy, if I agree to pay the list price I get the item. Sometimes I can haggle the price down but the listed price is always accepted. This system of listing a price to 'get people in the door' and then igniting a bidding war makes it impossible for anyone to shop for a house except for realtors who are 'in…

You are trying to stack the deck in your favor, making the seller pay for a portion of your house...

Why is it "fair" for the buyer to be able to offer less, when they determine the house to be worth less than the ask, but the seller shouldn't be able to ask for more, when they find out there is a lot of interest?

You will find that your suggestion will make all houses more expensive.

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

#77

Post by isolli »

koolba wrote: post #65
victorNicollet wrote: post #13

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…

What if you receive another cash offer above ask? This seems to happen every day in hot markets (e.g. New York City).

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

#78

Post by koolba »

stygiansonic wrote: post #67
koolba wrote: 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…

Two people working at a big tech company in the area will easily gross > 500K total comp.

$250K/year isn't chump change either. Let alone both having such jobs. Salaries in SV are high but they're not that high for most. At the single income level it's rare to have employees (NOTE: not contractors or business owners) surpass $3-350K.

Plus, if you plan on raising a family[1] then you'd have the added costs of a full time nanny as I doubt anyone with a $250K+ job is going to be around much to raise their kids.

[1]: Which I'm assuming they are if they're buying a 4BR house...

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

#79

Post by vasilipupkin »

BoorishBears wrote: post #42
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #3

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.

> but not enough to justify spending $2.5M on a smaller house, or 12x more per square foot. Maybe it's just the wording but I don't get that. If they're paying enough that 2.5M is within reach where it wouldn't be in Phoenix is it really a problem? I'm in the middle of a job search right now and I'm finding that while absolute numbers sound appalling (ie. 2.5M for a 2,000 sq.ft. house) the income:COL is not as dramat…

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.

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

#80

Post by Iknowsecurity »

Some areas in Vallejo above Oakland are also currently rising in price pretty quickly. After San Francisco, even Oakland is running out of affordable houses. There is a Ferry that goes from Vallejo to the Ferry building in San Francisco with free wifi. Unsurprising more people decide to live there.
Post reply on HN