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$782k over asking for a house in Sunnyvale

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

#81
post #65

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…

Do you have a citation for "seller must accept cash offer"?

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

#82

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

exactly

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

#83
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If France is anything like Denmark, the price is usually based on a combination of a public and a private valuation of the house (both of which are available to buyers upon request). You can give it any price you want, but since buyers can get an insight to its valuation, the asking price is usually around its valuation. So as I understand it, the strategy is usually to sell the house for a much higher price than its…

If you're selling through an agency, they usually recommend a price range (that you are free to decline, in which case the agency might refuse to do business with you).

If you're selling on your own, there's really no guidelines.

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

#86
post #61

I guess it must be a cultural thing. In major cities in Sweden 15% over the asking price is the asking price and 50% over the asking price, while rare, is hardly unheard of. No seller ever accepts the asking price unless they're really desperate.

I've read that in Sweden, participation of recent immigrants in economy is lower than in most other European countries. Why not create some jobs for them at building new homes and propping price down? Genuine question.

You can't build houses without land to build on, and desirable land makes up most of the price of desirable housing.

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

#87
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…

I would say it is more typical than anything else.

Maybe not so much for new construction, but most houses don't have a master bath.

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

#88
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.

Yes, I bet that in the near future, a modest house will cost $20 million, Bitcoin will be $100K per coin and Facebook will be a $10 trillion company. Poor SV suckers will spend their lives paying off their $20 million shoeboxes with their $500K per year salaries. Meanwhile I will be living in some exotic place in a mansion which I will have bought for $200K. I like where the future is going.

    I bet that in the near future, a modest house will cost $20 million, Bitcoin will be $100K per coin and Facebook will be a $10 trillion company
One of these things is not like the other.

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

#90
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 in 20 years, 30k/year will have less than half the real value.

i think someone leveraging themselves into a 5-figure/month mortgage is the exception, not the rule.

tl;dr people are rich these days. my real concern is social unrest because of these insane imbalances in wealth distribution.

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