P.S. what everyone else said, it’s a beautiful house in a beautiful spot!

Lovely. I hope your offer is accepted.

Agent said there must have been a doozy of an offer as they decided in an hour.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:


Agent said there must have been a doozy of an offer as they decided in an hour.

Does that mean you got the house?

Steve, I'm pretty sure that means someone got it -- with a doozy of an offer that topped piqué's.



I'm so piqué!!

Oh. I'm sorry.

I am so sorry. How frustrating for you. Real estate here is so crazy. Brand new small house in our neighborhood, crammed between new duplex rentals (that are owned by the sellers) and a JUNK HEAP of a house (with junk and old cars crammed in the yard) had a price put on it that is easily $100,000 more than it should be worth (based on the other houses in the neighborhood) and somebody just paid the asking price because they were desperate to find a house in Butte (because there is nothing decent on the market here). Will be interesting to see what Zillow values the other houses in the neighborhood at after that sale goes through.

Sorry for you, Pique'. The perils of house-shopping in a housing hotspot, eh?

Interesting that they didn't come back to you to see if you would match or raise that other offer. In a really hot market, buyers can rebid.

Some of this has me worrying about mini-bubbles. Not as bad as the financial institution-sustained bubble of 2008, but something that could pop as opposed to merely stopping and leveling.

I've watched the Zillow value of my Santa Fe home jump over 30% since we bought it less than three years ago. That's just not normal for housing. Since we bought it to live in, rather than as a pure investment play, this doesn't translate into any immediate benefit. Everything else in the area is also inflated, so there is no benefit to "taking a profit" if we want to stay in the area.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Interesting that they didn't come back to you to see if you would match or raise that other offer. In a really hot market, buyers can rebid.

I'm not seeing that here at all. The last house we bid on sold for $150k over asking. We had offered $50k over asking. Our realtor just sold a house she listed for $1M. She told me she got 17 offers and it sold for many times over asking. I can't even imagine who these people could be. No one we know in MT could afford to bid these houses up like this.

My doctor told me the character of the town is really changing. A big factor this past winter was families moving from states where the schools were closed, moving here so their kids can attend school in person.

Tourist season doesn't begin till this weekend, but the out-of-state plates have been here all winter this year. The DMV has a huge backlog processing new driver's licenses and they can't get new license plates in fast enough to fulfill demand.

My entire life strategy has been built around having the freedom to live wherever I want. Now that people with real jobs can do that too, my strategy is ****** as they drive up the price of everything. Our only hope is that these people will be required to go back to work in person soon.

We are just grateful that we *do* own a house--a horse property to boot (much in demand), so if we ever do manage to find a house, our equity has a prayer of helping us keep up with inflation. And as long as we keep living here we can keep socking away Mr Pique's salary. Not the end of the world.

quote:

We are just grateful that we *do* own a house--a horse property to boot (much in demand), so if we ever do manage to find a house, our equity has a prayer of helping us keep up with inflation. And as long as we keep living here we can keep socking away Mr Pique's salary. Not the end of the world.

Glad for you for all of these details!

Still, finding a house, making an offer, all of that is time-consuming and we get invested, so it is disappointing.

OTOH, you're being smart about things. Not everyone is.

Someone I know apparently put an offer in on a house and part of her offer included $10,000 earnest money. Well, now, because the house is something like 2 hours or more from her workplace and her current house is not yet on the market, the underwriters at her lending bank are saying they can't/won't give her a loan for the property as a primary residence, but as an investment property. She couldn't get her employer to give her a letter for the underwriter to say that she was allowed to work remotely (which the underwriter suggested might convince them). And the interest rate (total loan terms) as an investment property apparently is something she can't do (I don't have those details so I don't know why). Anyway, if the loan falls through, she's basically going to have to walk away from that $10,000. Yikes!

When we made our offer on this house, IIRC the earnest money was $3000 and I remember not being happy about it but knowing that if something really did go wrong, I could withstand a $3000 loss, I wouldn't be happy about it but it wouldn't be the end of the world. A $10,000 loss, though? No way!

So I feel bad for her, but I also feel like she's not making smart decisions (or else not getting good advice).

Anyway, I believe when the seller rejects the offer, they return the earnest money, so of course that's not an issue for you piqué.

/threaddrift

Properly written purchase contracts usually have a "loan contingency" provision in them, stating that the buyer has X number of days to obtain financing. If her contract has that provision she may be able to get her earnest money back.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Properly written purchase contracts usually have a "loan contingency" provision in them, stating that the buyer has X number of days to obtain financing. If her contract has that provision she may be able to get her earnest money back.

I told her to check for the very thing. She didn’t know what it was so I sure hope it’s in there! We just had this conversation yesterday, so it’s very much in-progress.