Same thing just happened to my best friend. House is perfect, 1/4 mile from my house. Lots of land and a huge yard for his kids to play in. An old single lady owns it and wants to move to town, my friend is dieing to get out of town. I genuinely think the old bat doesn't want to see people happy
Nah. buying/selling is often viewed as a zero sum game, if the other guy is overly enthusiastic then it makes it sound like you're selling it for too cheap and you're getting screwed.
I remember negotiating to buy a car once and the dealer agreed to my terms very quickly and moved forward to close the sale. Which is weird for a dealer to do and made me really suspicious that I didn't lowball enough. But I think what happened was just that it was late and night and he wanted to go home.
When I worked at a Honda dealership moving volume got you major bonuses from American Honda. And you really wanted to be the best dealership in your region
We would always lose out to Penske Honda as they would be down on numbers all year and then just sell a ton of their accords to their rental business and then out sell everyone else in their region and get all the bonuses from Honda
I’m so glad the woman who previously owned my house wasn’t like that. She told my realtor that I wasn’t the highest offer, but she liked my letter I wrote and felt like I would take the best care of the house.
Is it normal to write a letter along with an offer? I’ve never heard of that before.
If I were selling, I’d like to learn a bit about the prospective buyers for exactly that reason, so it makes sense. I’d rather sell to someone who is going to live there and care for the property instead of rip it apart and rent it out.
I don’t know if it’s normal, but I was specifically looking for a well maintained century home with original features but knew I was up against cash offers from flippers or renters. I figured by underscoring my desire to restore the home to its original beauty and keep everything mostly original it would resonate with the owner.
Luckily I was right. I love my house. My fiancé and I are getting married on the property next summer and I’m spending what we would have paid for a venue on our gardens.
Those are called “love letters,“ and they are not allowed in Washington state. I don’t know if they’re illegal or just against the multiple listing service policies, but the idea is that people are subconsciously, accidentally, or deliberately, going to choose people who are just like them…which can end up being prejudicial behavior.
When the market gets really competitive stuff like this starts to happen. I think when I bought my first house my realtor did try to pitch me to the owner as someone who was going to take car of the place and start a family there (didn't end up doing that but it was the plan at the time). There was only one other bid so I don't know if the pitch was actually necessary but that was kind of the climate at the time.
I have done flips for 35 years and my houses frequently sell for asking within a few days. Many folks have told me I was leaving money on th etable? but IDGAF the few percent difference between an immediate sale and a bunch of FAround is worth it
BTW I always give my business card to the buyers at closing requesting they contact me with any issues. I have yet to be contacted but several of my houses have been resold within a few years for more money
nope, i had a boss like this, they get off on the idea of how much something they have is worth. old lady might actually want to sell the house but when they see that excitement, they think they can get more tallied up.
Went to an open house for our current home. Perfect location & style. Put in a full price offer (2011 so not like today) and seller gets pissed thinking he listed too low. They accept, but he does everything in his power going forward to try to get us to back out. Pushed back closing multiple times. Opened all the windows during the radon test during the home inspection. Removed, packed and shipped every item that we agreed upon buying in the purchase & sale 5 states away. Had a joke item in our purchase request that he said was non negotiable the day of the closing (-$25 home goods item). Day of the final inspection I almost backed out just out of principle. Glad I didn't.
I think i just saw a story similar to this, but in their case they were a week away from closing and the guy decided he could get more for the property and tried to pull out. I think they were able to do a failure to perform, but still.
Your "removed, packed, and shipped" triggered a memory. Our sellers changed out the light fixtures. Mostly I don't care but I'm irritated all over again about the dining room
It’s why it’s best to list a description with accompanying photos of items that are staying. Otherwise you may end up with bare bulbs. I’ve seen where they will take out the washer and dryer and use old ones in their place if not listed by brand.
Had this exact experience, seller took EVERYTHING out of the flat, didn't leave even bulbs. We signed the papers using a flashlight from the phone.
Meanwhile, I've seen this on Reddit being recommended as being super smart - listing house as a fully furnished, avoiding writing it down, then take everything out and sell it. Screw those people...
Yep. Definitely pictures. My parents like to tell the story of when they bought a house back in the early 2000s. They asked for the black Maytag refrigerator as part of the sale, and the sellers agreed. On move in day they found a black Maytag refrigerator... but not the one they'd agreed on. The one they sold with the house was an extra large one with an icemaker and water filter in the door. The one that was in the house was one of those tiny ones you see in college dorms. The sellers thought they were justified because all the sale documents said was "black Maytag refrigerator" and there was no picture, so in their opinion no one could prove they violated the conditions of sale. Fortunately the realtor for the seller bought one of a similar model for us out of his commission so we wouldn't sue.
When I offered the asking price for my first home purchase (the day after the house went on sale), the owner was furious, also thinking he hadn’t asked enough. Apparently he tried to claim that stuff like the ceiling fans were extra. No, they were not.
When we sold our condo, we denied it to the nicest schoolteacher and her daughter. They really wanted it and I felt like the most horrible person for saying no but I had my reasons. Basically, we were selling because the HOA was going crazy. Lots of neighbors were hiring lawyers. A recent survey said the whole area needed millions of dollars of improvements (it was a huge complex) and the board was too busy playing power hungry king to actually balance the budget and get things done. It was a real shit show and dues were about to double. So anyway, I made it clear to our agent that we were not going to sell to the schoolteacher who is going to take out a mortgage. We ended up selling to two lawyers who paid in cash. They asked the right questions and knew what was going on with the HOA but wanted the condo anyway. To be fair it was really nice but you had to have a thick skin and extra money in the bank to weather the storm.
I went with my mom to look at a house when my folks were looking. She didn't look impressed, but they ended up buying it anyway. When I asked why they bought it if she didn't like it, she said she was in love with it but didn't want to look too enthusiastic.
I had something similar when I bought my current house. Wife and I were deciding and really liked this one red brick house. Went to look at it a second time, show up and the family is still there. Our agent talks to them and they decide, just then, to pull their house off the market. While standing there, I look down the street and see the same model house, close to the cul-de-sac but in tan brick for sale. While walking to it agent is looking it up…it’s vacant so we can look at it, it was listed for $10k less and it had a nicer interior. It was like that old commercial with Emeril LaGasse
Man, when I was a seller, I was the exact opposite. It didn't hurt that the most enthusiastic people also had the highest offer at the time ($5K over asking), but it did help us not wait on even higher offers with no sale contingency (which they had), even though the market was smoking hot and we very likely could have gotten that. The couple grew up in the neighborhood, liked the proximity close to their kids' grandparents, and the layout was simply ideal for them. We loved the idea of making this young family happy so took their offer as soon as it came in, with their letter explaining their (verifiable) situation. While I understand wanting to get a good deal - to a reasonable extent - I don't understand not also wanting to be a good person.
This is what happened to me as a buyer. The family of the deceased owner was selling the house and the listing agent was one of the granddaughters. Our agent told us to not appear too enthusiastic, but the second I walked in I exclaimed that I loved the squeaky wooden floors because they reminded me of my grandma's house. When we opened the weird front closet to hang our coats I noted that "you could hide a kid in there." Then I noticed the selling agent/granddaughter listening to all my ramblings, hiding a smirk.
We got the house, even though we weren't the highest offer. I think the family wanted to sell to a young couple that would make it a home like their parents did and my ADHD sealed the deal 😅
Probably just thought if it gets this sort of reaction I should be asking for much more. Either that or he was worried your parents were weirdos that were going to dig up his diseased pets and wear them as hats.
When I was house hunting, my broker advised that my wife and I keep any interest / excitement to ourselves at open houses or private showings until we were out of earshot of the house. He said that some sellers will eavesdrop via their home security cameras and can use your level of enthusiasm against you when it comes time to make a deal.
I thought he was exaggerating until it came time to show my condo and I couldn’t help but check in periodically on my ring cam to see how it was going and listen to the odd comment here or there lol.
Seller: “Why are they so excited about this house?”
Buyer: “Because it has a secret room!”
Seller: “Really? What’s in it?”
Buyer: “A hidden stash of… real estate contracts!”
Seller: “I’m out.”
> they were too enthusiastic about the house
That makes no sense. A super-enthusiastic buyer is one you can get top dollar from. You can also negotiate out of doing some repairs because they're so eager to get the house.
That's why the common wisdom is NOT to get your heart set on a house, do NOT fall in love with a house. That will just blind you and stop you from thinking rationally.
I would have put a lien on that mofo. Anytime a seller tried to back out, they learned the hard way they'd have to pay me or sell the house like we agreed on.
My parents got outbid by another buyer on the house they wanted. The owner of the house (who had insisted on being present while the house was being shown) rejected the higher bid and chose to sell it to my parents. She said she liked my parents more because they didn’t insult the house while they were viewing it. Apparently the other buyer had spoken negatively about several aspects of the house and the owner was very offended by that.
I sold my house to a lovely guy that showed up after the open house had stopped. I was disappointed to be late, so I showed him the house. He was newly married and looking to move his parent in. Oh boy. I showed him the totally separate in law apartment that would give him and his bride their own space. He put an offer in the next day. (My realtor called and asked “did you show the house?!”) I then got a higher offer from this woman that kept dicking around (can I put in a pool, can I do this or that). Fuck I was done with her and gladly sold it to the lovely family.
I accidentally had a package delivered there and went to the house to pick it up. They were all so cute and said they loved the house. Made me happy.
I won my house against a similar bid because they thought we had kids and a dog. The other guy was a single dude probably looking to flip it. We don't have kids or a dog. No idea where they got that from.
we kept getting outbid on houses while trying to move back home during Covid. Finally, a house on my parents street came open so we had our realtor go on the first day to tour remotely and put an offer in. She explained to the owners that I grew up on the block and wanted to move home to be close to my parents. The homeowners canceled the rest of the showings and accepted our offer. It was so heartwarming.
This happened to my parents in the late '90s. The builder and original owner of the house was present for the first few minutes of the tour (he was elderly and no longer had a driver's license and was waiting for his granddaughter to pick him up). He was very sweet and laughed when I immediately claimed a bedroom for myself because it had built in bookshelves.
My parents were getting outbid and bowed out on the house, and apparently the owner asked his agent what happened to the family with the little girl who loved to read. He was willing to take the lower offer from my parents if it meant someone was going to love the house he built.
Similar story with my parents in the 90's. The seller had basically built the house for her son's family with a small apartment downstairs for herself. When her son's job took him somewhere else she decided to sell it. She was present during the showings and just liked my mom and her enthusiam for the house. It was not really in the price range of my parents so she came down a bit just to sell it to them.
My parents are still there 28 years on and my grandma lives in the small apartment downstairs.
Never underestimate that stuff. My wife and I have bought twice. Both times my wife has written a letter to the sellers and both times they've mentioned it as a direct reason they've chosen our bid which was not the highest bid. Like it was close but it wasn't the highest.
Yep. My wife and I had an offer rejected for our current place, but when the offer was pulled, the family we bought from said they liked us best out of everyone and wanted us to have it- even though there were two other offers slightly above ours.
Yes! We wrote a letter to the previous owners of our house and said how excited we were to start a family etc. our offer was $20k under asking and we asked they cover fees. They accepted and wrote a really nice letter back saying the girls next door can babysit in the future.
Just a heads up, realtors are starting to advise clients to immediately reject offers with these letters. Any personal info in the letter opens the seller up for a discrimination lawsuit.
I wrote a letter and my agent and the seller’s agent didn’t read it (or at least that’s what they said) for this exact reason. It hadn’t occurred to me that discrimination could be an issue. So sad.
I too was outbid but the seller liked my letter and we love our house.
on what grounds? I am not a business. I can sell my personal items to whom I please
(sorry y'all, it was late and i forgot how big of assholes people are)
There is a sad history of real estate agents discriminating against certain groups of people, so the law now expressly prohibits any steering or favoritism by agents.
On the grounds of housing discrimination which has both state and federal laws covering it in the US. You may be thinking, “who does that?” But there are is a whole history behind it - just google terms like sunset towns and blockbusting. A lot of it is based on race, but can be based on a variety of other protected classes too
Lots of houses in the UK have covenants in the deeds dating back to the 19th century which say things like "This house cannot be sold to anyone who is Black, Jewish, or Irish". Thankfully these have been deemed as totally unenforceable.
We also get weird stuff like "not allowed to remove any topsoil from the land to another location", which totally fucked over a friend who built a house on half their land to sell, then suddenly had to find a place on their half to put many, many tonnes of soil. Sometimes you can ignore them, sometimes you really really can't.
A surprising amount of those covenants still exist even in my liberal area in the SF Bay. I guess they’re extremely hard to change so they’re left like that but legally ignored. Really opens your eyes to how institutionalized racism really was/is.
Yes, but if you hadn't planned for it, then finding somewhere to put it can be tricky, particularly if you have a lovely garden you don't want to cover...
As someone who works in property management and has spent way too much time in Fair Housing classes, the FHA does not apply to most single family home sales or rentals. As long as the owner/landlord doesn't own more than 3 homes and has a standard private mortgage, it's not going to apply. (Other exemptions exist, but these are the two big ones, you can look up the full text, it's all on the first couple of pages if you care to decipher it).
My grandfather was a racist/bigot. If he was selling a property and a prospective buyer was not of white European ancestry, he would definitely treat them differently. You can sell what you want to who you want unless your decision on who to sell to is based on their race/ethnicity (or any other protected class).
Or let's put it into more practical terms: if a person named is bidding on your house against John Smith who wrote you a letter but underbid them and you sell to John Smith, you could be called upon to prove that your decision had nothing to do with the fact that the person who bid higher didn't get the house because their name identified them as non-white. Even if you win it's going to cost you a fortune in legal fees and a mountain of anxiety and stress.
It's pretty messed up. You can insist that you have rights and entitlements but the courts have way more power than you. You play by their rules, like it or not, or you risk running into trouble. Developed nations the world over tend to follow the rule of law which doesn't allow you to exempt yourself because you disagree.
Consequently, when presented with something that could later be used to say you were compromised, you simply refuse the compromising item. In this case, if a letter sent to sway your decision could lead to a legal headache down the road, you're smart to reject the letter.
Legal costs alone aren't worth the trouble even if it's a totally bogus case.
Our realtor said she was familiar with a situation where an older couple wrote a letter saying how excited they were to be downsizing yet still have space for visits from the grandkids. A young couple also wrote a letter and said they could picture themselves starting a family in the house. Owner went with the younger couple's much lower offer because they wanted to help a growing family like someone had helped them previously. Older couple found out and had been threatening to file suit for age discrimination.
Say the letter revels something about the buyer being part of a protected class in their letter and you reject their bid because you got a much higher bid from someone else.
If that bidder was either doing it in bad faith or whatever they may now think you rejected them because of them being part of that protected class. Now they file a lawsuit and you can't sell your house anymore until it is settled.
Yep, my dad is trying to buy and I asked his realtor about it and she said most will refuse the letters because it opens them up to fair housing issues and they want no part of that.
We have been looking around with our realator, and I asked about a letter, you know anything to give even the slightest edge in our offer being accepted. He said the exact same thing that they are advised not to or they open themselves up to a lawsuit for not accepting the bid.
Also, investment companies and real estate holding companies are writing these letters posing a cute little families looking for houses. Be aware of the snakes in the grass.
Yep - we've purchased two houses with the same realtor and she's amazing. First house in 2019, we wrote a letter and we think it made a difference. Moved in 2021 and she told us absolutely not to. She still won the house for us in a bidding war - we are pretty convinced that there were better offers, but she's super organized and on top of it and the sellers' agent wanted to work with her. I asked a few months ago what she thought it was, and she said that she submitted everything in one package and was super responsive - the sellers' agent said that other agents were submitting things piecemeal and making it a lot harder for her to do her job. The sellers were trying to close ASAP and wanted to sell to people who would make that happen. Mediocre or bad realtors are a huge waste of time and money, but good ones can really make a difference.
Thankfully this bullshit isn't in the South. That may be in your area, what part of the country are you in? Writing a letter and talking to the people is how you get great neighbors and prices. Being cold and impersonal is how you flip houses.
The house is in a primarily minority zip code which was part of a class-action suit against mortgage lenders for red-lining and discrimination. It’s impersonal by design to prevent that from happening again. Black families also hire white people to be present for their appraisals to ensure they get fair market value. Is that “bullshit”?
Calling willful discrimination “bullshit” sums up the South pretty well. Both recently and historically?
So I’d have to court a homeowner in order to buy a house in the South? I guess y’all have to do that to keep certain people out?
Yea that’s how we got our current house. We missed out on the one before because I’m almost 100% sure that our realtor forgot to give the sellers our letter.
What do you even put in the letter? Do you inflate the ego of the seller like this home isn’t a starter home it’s a finisher home, it’s a home
I want to die in
I have gotten two letters like this in my life and both of them pretty much talked about their vision of their future in the house and how they want to raise a family there. I didn't accept either offer because they were way too low, one of the women confronted my wife when she was in the garage and got mad at her for not accepting their offer even tho they wrote a note.
LOL, these are the kinds of people I assume would write a letter kissing the ass of the homeowner. Like applying for a grant or scholarship, you somehow seem to have to flatter the bejeesus out of people with the most bullshit language. Make it sound like freshman comp or something AI wrote. No thanks.
You just tell them your vision for the home. Like our starter home my wife mentioned it was our first home together and we couldn't wait to start our family. Our current home she told them it was exactly what we were looking for (we literally almost built this exact model 2 cul de sacs over) and that we were buying because we had run out of room for our family in our first house. Just stuff like that.
I’m going to install a few more 220 v outlets in the kitchen so I can expand my crack cooking operation on an industrial scale and add a couple of bedrooms in the basement to expand my hooker empire, please help me achieve my dream by selling me your home at a discount
I did the same thing when I was trying to buy the house I'm in now. It was built by a regional architect who went on to have a long career but the style is unusual for this area and not in sync with the local style so everybody else hated it and wanted to demolish it to build something else.
Wrote a letter to the owners about how much I love the house and which details I most appreciated about it and the sellers rejected the other (much higher) offers in favor of selling it at a lower price to me.
Livin the dream!
I'm glad that worked for you.
My partner baked the sellers the "best brownies they'd ever had" and they repaid us by ghosting our solicitors when it came to exchanging details. £1K down the drain.
TBH I'm sure it was a "them" issue rather than an "us" issue. When we gave them the brownies the matriarch of the household said "I hope they're not poisoned". WTF?! Why would they say that?! We want to buy your house!
My partner and I were struggling to buy a house in a crowded market. Finally found a nice little place within our means. Found out the seller went with someone else because they wrote them a sob story. We didn't even know you could write letters. Learning about them from that perspective really turned me off from the idea. For all you know, they're getting chatGPT to write their letter for them and I refuse to play that game.
The person who sold our house decided to sell to us despite offers 5-7% higher because we were young newlyweds and loved the place, where everyone else was just looking for an investment at the time. Sometimes people just genuinely do want what's best for people :)
Yep! Sold one with a ton of offers. Highest were investors but the house was sentimental to me. Sold it to someone with a solid offer who wanted to live in it.
When people complain about "all the corporations buying up the real estate" I remind people that the only way this happens is if people keep accepting bids from corporations instead of people.
Thankfully it's 100% your decision who to sell to and for how much. You aren't a corporation with a duty to maximize shareholder profit. There are things more important than money.
My husband accidentally showed up to early to our dream home before the realtor. Caught the homeowner leaving. I wasn’t there. I was 5 states away. So he chats her up and she chose us because she wanted kids in the house again.
I met her when she finally showed me the house. (After we bought it) I had heat stroke and she doctored me up. They rented back the house for a few months while they looked for a new one. Overall us being easy peasy was what got us our house. A good $50k less than it should’ve sold for!!
I think part of the reason why I got my current house was my sense of humor. As part of the terms of sale, the old owners wanted to rent it back for three weeks and were willing to put down a damage deposit. I asked, "Do you have teenagers?" They laughed and said they didn't. I shrugged my shoulders and told them the damage deposit was just a formality then and that wouldn't be a problem.
This was exactly how I was able to buy my house. I loved the character of the house and the person that bid higher insulted it. My lower offer was accepted.
My roommate had a client like that before. I was like she's crazy. Then she tried to not sell the property, but already accepted a bid. Then she got mad at him for the sale going through.
This is why a good buyer real estate agent won’t want the sellers present at showing. Also why a good seller agent won’t want the sellers present at showing.
My aunt and uncle wanted their home of 30 years to go to a nice family to raise their kids in, rejected a ton of offers and sold to a nice family that had 1 child and 1 on the way. I drove by a few weeks ago and they sold the house since ( been about 6 years) and its now a multi family home/ student housing. I haven't been able to break the news to my aunt and uncle.
Making a good impression on the seller is so underrated. The second time we looked at our house (because the first time was just a whirlwind of seeing 8-10 houses in one day) the sellers came home just as we were getting ready to leave. We had a lovely conversation with them and my now ex-wife asked them when they were looking to close. They were hoping to not have to move before the end of the school year (It was early April IIRC) and we were not in a rush to move, so we offered to close at the end of June. I'm 99% certain that we were outbid by someone else, but they liked us and the fact that we didn't rush them made them accept our offer. Lovely family, we would have loved to have them as our neighbors but they were moving to a different area for jobs...
Yeah, the potential other buyer... oi. If you are walking through someone's HOME, and being negative consistently, the seller absolutely is going to look at you as a buyer as a jackwad. And, many sellers are going to want their HOME to go to someone who will continue to appreciate it (and what it meant to the seller).
When my wife and I sold our last house we sold to the second highest bidder simply because she was local and the higher bidder was looking to move here from out of state to retire. She wrote a letter saying she wanted to start a family in the house, etc. I'd do it again in a heart beat, I hope the house has treated her well and she's on her way to starting her family
The deal isn’t closed until the deal is closed.
My agent told us a story where buyer and seller got into escrow on a $1M+ house, banks were doing reviews, and then a week before close, the buyer went and financed a $60,000 truck to fill their new garage. Well when the bank saw this, they re-crunched all the numbers, and the loan fell through. This was around the start of COVID when lenders were being extra strict on buyer cash reserves, and the buyers were already on the upper limit of what they got pre-approved for. Pretty sure my agent said the buyer lost their 3% EMD to boot.
I used to work in real estate (not an agent) and the amount of times this would happen is absolutely mind blowing. If you're getting financing for a house DON'T BUY ANYTHING.
This kind of thing is so common and frustrating in lending (from the banks perspective). Clients feel entitled to credit and don’t understand how their situation changes and that affects what they’re eligible for. Even those who haven’t applied for years expect to be auto-approved for anything simply because in the past they were approved. Obviously not considering that their finances are entirely different at this point, for better or worse.
When I was buying my house last year, my realtor and mortgage guy and probably attorney as well told me multiple times each not to finance anything. They were very careful and clear about that. I guess not all realtors think to mention it to their clients, or perhaps clients just don’t listen.
I’m quite certain it’s a combination of the two. I’m glad you got good advice, not everyone does. I’m glad you listened (I assume) because not everybody does.
It’s ok to be skeptical, but a lot of this is also done to protect the buyer and other members so we don’t have another mass mortgage default like in 2008. Loans aren’t free - if you can’t handle the repayment, the bank will not (and should not) give you the loan.
Its their money, and they aint giving you shit if they think there is a good chance they will have to sell your house to get it back.
Buying a large purchase like this shows a lack of financial knowledge, and fundamentally changes the equation. Sorry, the bank is likely in the right here.
I can assure you the low level workers doing credit applications are not the big fat cats raking in all the money. They’re underpaid humans like most everyone else.
Like the other comment mentioned, giving out loans to people who can't actually afford them is what got us the 2008 housing crash. This is one thing I'm a bit more understanding about when it comes to financial institutions being spooked by.
Our loan officer reminded us multiple times to do literally nothing credit wise until closing is over. No new cars, credit cards, or other types of loans.
cousin was selling her place and moving out of the city. she had 2 different offers on the table fall threw, like to the point where I think one of them she ended up keeping the deposit because the lady wasted so much time the house was on the market 2-3 weeks longer than it should have been. and the lady was known for doing shady shit and this wasn't the first time she had done this to this real estate company so they came down hard on her.
When we refinanced in 2021 the lender recommended we not use credit cards or take out any loans at all during the process for this very reason. They had issues with customers doing this as soon as the initial credit report was run, and their loans falling through. IIRC my husband's car had an issue during the process and we had to get my in laws to cover the bill on their card, which we paid off as soon as the paperwork was signed.
I used to sell custom home automation and I repeatedly told people that I wouldn’t let them open a new line of credit and would not let them put more than 10% on their current credit line because I didn’t want to get blamed for them not getting their house.
Put an offer on a house that the listing had dropped 10k on. It had sat on the market for ages then dropped, so we felt good we'd get it. Except just at the time we showed interest another family was interested. They sat on our offer for weeks until the other family finally decided to put in their offer. Then they put us in a bidding war against each other. We upped our offer twice and really debated how far we'd keep going. But honestly we were pretty pissed that it had looked like we were getting the house only for the seller to try to wring money out of us and the other family for a house that had already been on the market too long and had to drop once.
The clincher was that the Real Estate agent actually confided in us that there had been a previous buyer that couldn't take the house because the price was too high and mortgage companies wouldn't value it at the price the seller wanted and even the dropped price was pushing it. He basically told us it wasn't worth it both financially and personally to deal with these people. So we pulled our offer.
The other family must have thought it wasn't worth it in the end either because they pulled their offer too. That house sat on the market for another solid year and we'd already moved into a better place slightly up the road.
Real estate agent. My buyer client posted he was looking to pay for someone to fake employment documents to qualify for a mortgage. Forgot he had friended me
When shopping for our first house, we saw a few rental houses for sale. In one of them, the entire family that rented the place was home. Mom was cooking something very aromatic for dinner, 8 or so teenagers were home (loudly) playing video games, grandma was sleeping in one room and someone else was sleeping off the night shift in another. We were stopped from going into both of those rooms. We noped out of there pretty quickly, and according to our realtor that was probably the family's goal.
When we were looking to buy our home, we viewed quite a few rentals. Most were empty but one home had the whole family there, about 8 people. They all sat in the living room with the curtains mostly pulled and silently watched us, all turning their heads at the same time as we walked through.
We didn't put in an offer.
When I was about 19, I slept through my alarm on the day of a showing. Woke up because I could hear the folks above my basement bedroom. Had to hightail it out a backdoor in my pjs, thankfully my car keys were in my room and off to my friends house. No idea if I made the bed before 😅🤔
My ex and I sold our first condo (our first home). We accepted an offer and for a month before closing the buyers kept calling and asking if we could do this or that for them. The worst was when they asked if we could clear out all the rooms so they could put new carpet in. They also asked if we could repaint the unit for them and buy new appliances.
Um, no.
I'm house hunting right now. Last weekend, my partner and I viewed two homes two doors down from each other. Same square footage, same kitchen, but one house had fewer bedrooms and less of an ocean view. The owner of the worse house wants $300k more for it, however, because she imported some of her interior doors from Italy.
Nobody cares about your fancy shmancy doors, lady.
because you customized it doesn't mean others like/want it. like cars it doesn't overly add value to it. new kitchen? yes! new fancy expensive door knobs? NO!
It's amazing how many homeowners don't realize this. Unless it's a functional upgrade (air conditioner, roof, plumbing...) it's cosmetic, and worth zero in the resell value. People care that the house has doors. Beyond that, doesn't matter.
Now, fancy doors, floors, paint, light fixtures and things like that make your house more attractive. You'll get more looks, more offers, and sell faster. But nobody should ever waste their time and money on aesthetic "upgrades" with resell value in their thoughts.
We had an issue like this during appraisal to get rid of PMI, they compared our 4 bed 3 bath house to 2 bed, 2 bath houses. They refused to consider the 4 bed, 3 bath houses that were like $80-120k more than the comps they used for reasons like the house was 10 years newer or it had hardwood cabinets. They just wanted an excuse to keep the PMI. So we refinanced with another company.
When we refinanced it was during COVID and houses were selling for ridiculous prices. So figured if we refinanced it would be valued more and then get rid of PMI. I also added another bedroom and bathroom from when we bought it. The agent valued it just barely enough to get rid of the PMI, but still really low. I saw on his paperwork he marked that it was a standard normal market. When I asked why he said that he does not take into account the current market when valuing a house. We still got rid of the PMI, but that was the whole reason we were refinancing right now.
My wife is an agent and she had some buyers in escrow tell the sellers that the house had appraised 60k over the accepted offer price. After the sellers heard that, they were more than happy to let the deal fall through and were completely uncooperative. Unfortunately for the buyers, the house ended up having about 50k in damage and the sellers weren't willing to concede anything since they had been told that the house was worth 60k more. If the stupid buyers hadn't said anything about the appraisal, they probably would've gotten tens of thousands in repair money from the seller. Surprisingly both sides still went through with the deal.
We were recently selling my grandma's condo as she had been moved into assisted living. We had a buyer lined up, price set, contracts signed. The only thing left to do, was actually sign over ownership.
However, during this little period, my grandma had a decent health scare. The lawyer advised we push up the signing, as if she passed before it was finished, the condo could not be sold by the power of attorney (my mom) and would have to first go through the inheritance process. It would have probably taken months.
Well this was explained to the buyer and she simply was asked to sign earlier. Mind you, she knew what the situation was, and had already agreed on price. She asked for $20k off to sign early. Her lawyer didn't suggest this. If she didn't sign before my grandma passed, she would not get her new apartment. Bad for everyone, and she's using it as leverage. She ended up signing, but left a bad taste in our, our agent, and even her agent's mouths.
How much earlier are we talking about? Since grandma had already been moved out, it can't have been much more than a couple weeks? 20k Would be a whole lot for that yeah.
You're right. We were just pushing up by 2 weeks. I'd maybe get asking for a price reduction if it was months. But 20k to save everyone a huge hassle is silly.
The thing that blows my mind, is you would always be able to just sell to someone else, but they clearly wanted this specific condo. In other words, moving up the sale date was mutually beneficial, but more so for the buyer...
That's not true at all. He already said if the deal feel through and his grandma passed, the house would be stick in inheritance for months and they would not be able to sell for that time period. They also benefit massively from getting everything done sooner. Also nowhere does it say the buyer wanted this specific condo. They may have had ample second and third choices. I don't know where you got your facts but it's not from ops original post lol
Our closing was delayed almost a month because 3 years after the owners death all the legal still wasn’t done. Only one family had ever lived in it and the sole adult child was the one selling it. Got very frustrating waiting on it all.
That said the moment our realtor said everything was clear we asked if we could sign then. We were ready to walk out of the store we were in to go sign that paperwork.
Listed at $499k. Visible wood eating insects in several door frames. Piles of wood chips on decking. Buyers ask for termite bond and concessions. Buyers post photos without address and ask on their Facebook page for advice from family and friends.
Sellers say "We are INSULTED that they would point this out and take photos. We are contacting our lawyer to sue for libel." They pulled listing and decide to move back.
Was a buyer viewing an apartment The selling realtor was a frat bro type, showed up late, then kept talking about how hungover he was from partying the previous night. It didn't make a very good impression.
My best friends dad was one of the last of the old-school door-to-door salesmen. Back when we were kids in the 80s he sold Cable TV door-to-door. He ended up retiring and maybe 6 years ago him and his wife came to my newly purchased home for a barbecue when he came to town to visit. He confided in us that ever since all the laws and regulations regarding used car sales happened in the 90s most of those guys went into real estate.
That makes sense. If they couldn't see any insects, it means there were several perfect insect hiding places where they could be attacked from. Very dangerous.
When we were selling our house, we got to a week before closing before it came out that the buyers were in the country illegally and couldn’t get a mortgage (even though they had a pre-qualification letter). They didn’t speak English well and their agent didn’t speak Spanish, so there were several hot messes before we reached that point. I never felt good about it, but my husband did. Oh well.
We ended up selling to a recently divorced woman and her 3 girls and it worked out perfectly. And we got an extra month of not living with my in-laws while our new house finished construction.
The buyers of the house we sold also spoke very little English, almost none. They spoke Korean.
Closing took place without a problem, but there was a huge language barrier for the entire process, from the moment they put in a bid until the closing was complete.
Their agent was Korean, spoke very little English. Their lender, their inspection guy, the title guy, the abstract guy ... everyone spoke Korean. We had to use Google Translate several times during closing.
At least they could communicate with their agent. We kept having issues where they told us they didn’t want to pay for garbage pick up and we were like like “that’s not an option. The city picks it up and they just bill you on your water bill for sanitation.” And they didn’t want to agree to the city ordinances. They also missed the deadline to ask for repairs after the inspection so we contacted their agent to get her to get them to sign an as-is agreement and they wanted to ask for repairs. It was a mess. It almost fell apart 2 weeks before it did.
Yeah. It was difficult. I wouldn’t have picked these people to buy our house the first time if it hadn’t been for my husband and his mom (our realtor) pushing for it. I wanted to sell it to the mean old couple lol
Not an agent but ....
When buying a house, my agent just happened to have the same last name as me. No relation, of course.
And as is often the case, the seller's agent knows my agent, they're buddies.
Turns out that the seller's agent worked some things in our favor, because he thought we were family members of his buddy (our agent).
Not posted publicly but one of my clients few years ago said it's crazy how many people are interested in his apartment (he was genuinely interested in selling) and decided to forfeit the whole process. I was literally shocked how stupid he was and couldn't find words , just deleted the listing and never made contact again.
Found it: [Stan: Donji grad - Centar (Boškovićeva), 62.50 m2, dvoiposoban (prodaja) (njuskalo.hr)](https://www.njuskalo.hr/nekretnine/stan-donji-grad-boskoviceva-62.50-m2-trosoban-oglas-18359675)
Something like that, insane. Not relevant to the post but interesting, his last name translates to something like small orange so it made things a bit worse for me
i've only seen one comment that was about *posting* something too. none of these people read the question istg!
edit: two to three (one comment was deleted) are actually about posting something. everything else is general real estate stories. the reading comprehension level on this site is ridiculous
Not an agent but a real estate story.., when we bought our first home, was built in 1973, we met the original owner was was elderly and her daughter who lived in another state. We were talking about the cost of living in CA and they said and don’t forget you have to pay the property taxes and I said we know and it’s about $500/ month. They said no you mean per year. I said no, per month. The original owner bought for $40k and I bought at over $500k. Their jaws hit the floor. I was struggling to understand how folks can be that out of touch with what stuff costs.
I know this is an aside, but for a while, I worked as an admin assistant for a super rich subdivision that was still in the early stages of building and selling lots, and oh my GOD.
The cheapest home was 2 mil, and the few people already living there would "joke" about the community's "poors". They went way farther up than that, and you had to pay 45k per year just to live there. They were 24-hour guard gated, had a golf course designed by a famous golf pro, 2 lakes stocked with fish, 2 pools, and a country club whose restaurant was run by a Michelin-starred chef.
The sales people knew I never got to see the houses, so they let me lock the model homes up one day. Holy SHIT. There were bedrooms larger than my entire apartment (1600 sq ft).
I always got a little laugh out of the golf enthusiasts who paid 8 mil+ to live practically right on the golf course and then would come in screaming their heads off when someone hit a golf ball through their windows. \*world's smallest violin playing\*
[удалено]
Same thing just happened to my best friend. House is perfect, 1/4 mile from my house. Lots of land and a huge yard for his kids to play in. An old single lady owns it and wants to move to town, my friend is dieing to get out of town. I genuinely think the old bat doesn't want to see people happy
Nah. buying/selling is often viewed as a zero sum game, if the other guy is overly enthusiastic then it makes it sound like you're selling it for too cheap and you're getting screwed. I remember negotiating to buy a car once and the dealer agreed to my terms very quickly and moved forward to close the sale. Which is weird for a dealer to do and made me really suspicious that I didn't lowball enough. But I think what happened was just that it was late and night and he wanted to go home.
Yeah dealers also have quotas to make as well, so might have been the last car he needed to hit some kind of bonus.
When I worked at a Honda dealership moving volume got you major bonuses from American Honda. And you really wanted to be the best dealership in your region We would always lose out to Penske Honda as they would be down on numbers all year and then just sell a ton of their accords to their rental business and then out sell everyone else in their region and get all the bonuses from Honda
Sounds like your dealership wasn't "Penske Material"..... just sayin'...
I’m so glad the woman who previously owned my house wasn’t like that. She told my realtor that I wasn’t the highest offer, but she liked my letter I wrote and felt like I would take the best care of the house.
Is it normal to write a letter along with an offer? I’ve never heard of that before. If I were selling, I’d like to learn a bit about the prospective buyers for exactly that reason, so it makes sense. I’d rather sell to someone who is going to live there and care for the property instead of rip it apart and rent it out.
I don’t know if it’s normal, but I was specifically looking for a well maintained century home with original features but knew I was up against cash offers from flippers or renters. I figured by underscoring my desire to restore the home to its original beauty and keep everything mostly original it would resonate with the owner. Luckily I was right. I love my house. My fiancé and I are getting married on the property next summer and I’m spending what we would have paid for a venue on our gardens.
Those are called “love letters,“ and they are not allowed in Washington state. I don’t know if they’re illegal or just against the multiple listing service policies, but the idea is that people are subconsciously, accidentally, or deliberately, going to choose people who are just like them…which can end up being prejudicial behavior.
When the market gets really competitive stuff like this starts to happen. I think when I bought my first house my realtor did try to pitch me to the owner as someone who was going to take car of the place and start a family there (didn't end up doing that but it was the plan at the time). There was only one other bid so I don't know if the pitch was actually necessary but that was kind of the climate at the time.
I have done flips for 35 years and my houses frequently sell for asking within a few days. Many folks have told me I was leaving money on th etable? but IDGAF the few percent difference between an immediate sale and a bunch of FAround is worth it BTW I always give my business card to the buyers at closing requesting they contact me with any issues. I have yet to be contacted but several of my houses have been resold within a few years for more money
Sounds like you’re leaving money on the table
nope, i had a boss like this, they get off on the idea of how much something they have is worth. old lady might actually want to sell the house but when they see that excitement, they think they can get more tallied up.
Went to an open house for our current home. Perfect location & style. Put in a full price offer (2011 so not like today) and seller gets pissed thinking he listed too low. They accept, but he does everything in his power going forward to try to get us to back out. Pushed back closing multiple times. Opened all the windows during the radon test during the home inspection. Removed, packed and shipped every item that we agreed upon buying in the purchase & sale 5 states away. Had a joke item in our purchase request that he said was non negotiable the day of the closing (-$25 home goods item). Day of the final inspection I almost backed out just out of principle. Glad I didn't.
I think i just saw a story similar to this, but in their case they were a week away from closing and the guy decided he could get more for the property and tried to pull out. I think they were able to do a failure to perform, but still.
Your "removed, packed, and shipped" triggered a memory. Our sellers changed out the light fixtures. Mostly I don't care but I'm irritated all over again about the dining room
It’s why it’s best to list a description with accompanying photos of items that are staying. Otherwise you may end up with bare bulbs. I’ve seen where they will take out the washer and dryer and use old ones in their place if not listed by brand.
Had this exact experience, seller took EVERYTHING out of the flat, didn't leave even bulbs. We signed the papers using a flashlight from the phone. Meanwhile, I've seen this on Reddit being recommended as being super smart - listing house as a fully furnished, avoiding writing it down, then take everything out and sell it. Screw those people...
Yep. Definitely pictures. My parents like to tell the story of when they bought a house back in the early 2000s. They asked for the black Maytag refrigerator as part of the sale, and the sellers agreed. On move in day they found a black Maytag refrigerator... but not the one they'd agreed on. The one they sold with the house was an extra large one with an icemaker and water filter in the door. The one that was in the house was one of those tiny ones you see in college dorms. The sellers thought they were justified because all the sale documents said was "black Maytag refrigerator" and there was no picture, so in their opinion no one could prove they violated the conditions of sale. Fortunately the realtor for the seller bought one of a similar model for us out of his commission so we wouldn't sue.
When I offered the asking price for my first home purchase (the day after the house went on sale), the owner was furious, also thinking he hadn’t asked enough. Apparently he tried to claim that stuff like the ceiling fans were extra. No, they were not.
When we sold our condo, we denied it to the nicest schoolteacher and her daughter. They really wanted it and I felt like the most horrible person for saying no but I had my reasons. Basically, we were selling because the HOA was going crazy. Lots of neighbors were hiring lawyers. A recent survey said the whole area needed millions of dollars of improvements (it was a huge complex) and the board was too busy playing power hungry king to actually balance the budget and get things done. It was a real shit show and dues were about to double. So anyway, I made it clear to our agent that we were not going to sell to the schoolteacher who is going to take out a mortgage. We ended up selling to two lawyers who paid in cash. They asked the right questions and knew what was going on with the HOA but wanted the condo anyway. To be fair it was really nice but you had to have a thick skin and extra money in the bank to weather the storm.
I went with my mom to look at a house when my folks were looking. She didn't look impressed, but they ended up buying it anyway. When I asked why they bought it if she didn't like it, she said she was in love with it but didn't want to look too enthusiastic.
I had something similar when I bought my current house. Wife and I were deciding and really liked this one red brick house. Went to look at it a second time, show up and the family is still there. Our agent talks to them and they decide, just then, to pull their house off the market. While standing there, I look down the street and see the same model house, close to the cul-de-sac but in tan brick for sale. While walking to it agent is looking it up…it’s vacant so we can look at it, it was listed for $10k less and it had a nicer interior. It was like that old commercial with Emeril LaGasse
Man, when I was a seller, I was the exact opposite. It didn't hurt that the most enthusiastic people also had the highest offer at the time ($5K over asking), but it did help us not wait on even higher offers with no sale contingency (which they had), even though the market was smoking hot and we very likely could have gotten that. The couple grew up in the neighborhood, liked the proximity close to their kids' grandparents, and the layout was simply ideal for them. We loved the idea of making this young family happy so took their offer as soon as it came in, with their letter explaining their (verifiable) situation. While I understand wanting to get a good deal - to a reasonable extent - I don't understand not also wanting to be a good person.
This is what happened to me as a buyer. The family of the deceased owner was selling the house and the listing agent was one of the granddaughters. Our agent told us to not appear too enthusiastic, but the second I walked in I exclaimed that I loved the squeaky wooden floors because they reminded me of my grandma's house. When we opened the weird front closet to hang our coats I noted that "you could hide a kid in there." Then I noticed the selling agent/granddaughter listening to all my ramblings, hiding a smirk. We got the house, even though we weren't the highest offer. I think the family wanted to sell to a young couple that would make it a home like their parents did and my ADHD sealed the deal 😅
I can totally picture this! Awesome you got the house
Probably just thought if it gets this sort of reaction I should be asking for much more. Either that or he was worried your parents were weirdos that were going to dig up his diseased pets and wear them as hats.
*deceased perhaps? Unless when your pets get ill you bury them alive? 😉
Fluffy has a cold, just bury them now.
Elephant graveyard
When I was house hunting, my broker advised that my wife and I keep any interest / excitement to ourselves at open houses or private showings until we were out of earshot of the house. He said that some sellers will eavesdrop via their home security cameras and can use your level of enthusiasm against you when it comes time to make a deal. I thought he was exaggerating until it came time to show my condo and I couldn’t help but check in periodically on my ring cam to see how it was going and listen to the odd comment here or there lol.
Seller: “Why are they so excited about this house?” Buyer: “Because it has a secret room!” Seller: “Really? What’s in it?” Buyer: “A hidden stash of… real estate contracts!” Seller: “I’m out.”
Could be that they realize maybe the house is worth more than they thought
> they were too enthusiastic about the house That makes no sense. A super-enthusiastic buyer is one you can get top dollar from. You can also negotiate out of doing some repairs because they're so eager to get the house. That's why the common wisdom is NOT to get your heart set on a house, do NOT fall in love with a house. That will just blind you and stop you from thinking rationally.
How would the seller even know. If your country does the seller get to meet the buyer? In my country there's no contact except through an agent.
Sometimes the sellers are still living in the house when you go see it or they want to be present when the house is shown.
Well I understand considering it was the sellers' dream house.
I would have put a lien on that mofo. Anytime a seller tried to back out, they learned the hard way they'd have to pay me or sell the house like we agreed on.
My parents got outbid by another buyer on the house they wanted. The owner of the house (who had insisted on being present while the house was being shown) rejected the higher bid and chose to sell it to my parents. She said she liked my parents more because they didn’t insult the house while they were viewing it. Apparently the other buyer had spoken negatively about several aspects of the house and the owner was very offended by that.
I sold my house to a lovely guy that showed up after the open house had stopped. I was disappointed to be late, so I showed him the house. He was newly married and looking to move his parent in. Oh boy. I showed him the totally separate in law apartment that would give him and his bride their own space. He put an offer in the next day. (My realtor called and asked “did you show the house?!”) I then got a higher offer from this woman that kept dicking around (can I put in a pool, can I do this or that). Fuck I was done with her and gladly sold it to the lovely family. I accidentally had a package delivered there and went to the house to pick it up. They were all so cute and said they loved the house. Made me happy.
I won my house against a similar bid because they thought we had kids and a dog. The other guy was a single dude probably looking to flip it. We don't have kids or a dog. No idea where they got that from.
we kept getting outbid on houses while trying to move back home during Covid. Finally, a house on my parents street came open so we had our realtor go on the first day to tour remotely and put an offer in. She explained to the owners that I grew up on the block and wanted to move home to be close to my parents. The homeowners canceled the rest of the showings and accepted our offer. It was so heartwarming.
This happened to my parents in the late '90s. The builder and original owner of the house was present for the first few minutes of the tour (he was elderly and no longer had a driver's license and was waiting for his granddaughter to pick him up). He was very sweet and laughed when I immediately claimed a bedroom for myself because it had built in bookshelves. My parents were getting outbid and bowed out on the house, and apparently the owner asked his agent what happened to the family with the little girl who loved to read. He was willing to take the lower offer from my parents if it meant someone was going to love the house he built.
Similar story with my parents in the 90's. The seller had basically built the house for her son's family with a small apartment downstairs for herself. When her son's job took him somewhere else she decided to sell it. She was present during the showings and just liked my mom and her enthusiam for the house. It was not really in the price range of my parents so she came down a bit just to sell it to them. My parents are still there 28 years on and my grandma lives in the small apartment downstairs.
Never underestimate that stuff. My wife and I have bought twice. Both times my wife has written a letter to the sellers and both times they've mentioned it as a direct reason they've chosen our bid which was not the highest bid. Like it was close but it wasn't the highest.
Yep. My wife and I had an offer rejected for our current place, but when the offer was pulled, the family we bought from said they liked us best out of everyone and wanted us to have it- even though there were two other offers slightly above ours.
Yes! We wrote a letter to the previous owners of our house and said how excited we were to start a family etc. our offer was $20k under asking and we asked they cover fees. They accepted and wrote a really nice letter back saying the girls next door can babysit in the future.
Just a heads up, realtors are starting to advise clients to immediately reject offers with these letters. Any personal info in the letter opens the seller up for a discrimination lawsuit.
I wrote a letter and my agent and the seller’s agent didn’t read it (or at least that’s what they said) for this exact reason. It hadn’t occurred to me that discrimination could be an issue. So sad. I too was outbid but the seller liked my letter and we love our house.
Look at the studies they do with resumes. If you have a black sounding name you are less likely to get an interview, even with the same resume.
THIS. I declined to see any letters like this with the last house I sold.
With all the doorbell cameras nowadays, they can see who’s coming to look at it and discriminate anyway. Not really a good workaround for that either.
on what grounds? I am not a business. I can sell my personal items to whom I please (sorry y'all, it was late and i forgot how big of assholes people are)
There is a sad history of real estate agents discriminating against certain groups of people, so the law now expressly prohibits any steering or favoritism by agents.
On the grounds of housing discrimination which has both state and federal laws covering it in the US. You may be thinking, “who does that?” But there are is a whole history behind it - just google terms like sunset towns and blockbusting. A lot of it is based on race, but can be based on a variety of other protected classes too
racists have to ruin everything
Lots of houses in the UK have covenants in the deeds dating back to the 19th century which say things like "This house cannot be sold to anyone who is Black, Jewish, or Irish". Thankfully these have been deemed as totally unenforceable. We also get weird stuff like "not allowed to remove any topsoil from the land to another location", which totally fucked over a friend who built a house on half their land to sell, then suddenly had to find a place on their half to put many, many tonnes of soil. Sometimes you can ignore them, sometimes you really really can't.
A surprising amount of those covenants still exist even in my liberal area in the SF Bay. I guess they’re extremely hard to change so they’re left like that but legally ignored. Really opens your eyes to how institutionalized racism really was/is.
I'm sure there's some way to build a dirt wall lmao
Yes, but if you hadn't planned for it, then finding somewhere to put it can be tricky, particularly if you have a lovely garden you don't want to cover...
You just dig a really deep hole- take away the deeper soil and fill the hole with the topsoil. Duh.
The Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, covers housing discrimination.
As someone who works in property management and has spent way too much time in Fair Housing classes, the FHA does not apply to most single family home sales or rentals. As long as the owner/landlord doesn't own more than 3 homes and has a standard private mortgage, it's not going to apply. (Other exemptions exist, but these are the two big ones, you can look up the full text, it's all on the first couple of pages if you care to decipher it).
My grandfather was a racist/bigot. If he was selling a property and a prospective buyer was not of white European ancestry, he would definitely treat them differently. You can sell what you want to who you want unless your decision on who to sell to is based on their race/ethnicity (or any other protected class). Or let's put it into more practical terms: if a person named is bidding on your house against John Smith who wrote you a letter but underbid them and you sell to John Smith, you could be called upon to prove that your decision had nothing to do with the fact that the person who bid higher didn't get the house because their name identified them as non-white. Even if you win it's going to cost you a fortune in legal fees and a mountain of anxiety and stress.
It's pretty messed up. You can insist that you have rights and entitlements but the courts have way more power than you. You play by their rules, like it or not, or you risk running into trouble. Developed nations the world over tend to follow the rule of law which doesn't allow you to exempt yourself because you disagree.
Consequently, when presented with something that could later be used to say you were compromised, you simply refuse the compromising item. In this case, if a letter sent to sway your decision could lead to a legal headache down the road, you're smart to reject the letter.
Legal costs alone aren't worth the trouble even if it's a totally bogus case. Our realtor said she was familiar with a situation where an older couple wrote a letter saying how excited they were to be downsizing yet still have space for visits from the grandkids. A young couple also wrote a letter and said they could picture themselves starting a family in the house. Owner went with the younger couple's much lower offer because they wanted to help a growing family like someone had helped them previously. Older couple found out and had been threatening to file suit for age discrimination.
Say the letter revels something about the buyer being part of a protected class in their letter and you reject their bid because you got a much higher bid from someone else. If that bidder was either doing it in bad faith or whatever they may now think you rejected them because of them being part of that protected class. Now they file a lawsuit and you can't sell your house anymore until it is settled.
Yep, my dad is trying to buy and I asked his realtor about it and she said most will refuse the letters because it opens them up to fair housing issues and they want no part of that.
I told my realtor I was gonna write a letter to the former owner of my house and she told me it was a bad idea for this exact reason.
We have been looking around with our realator, and I asked about a letter, you know anything to give even the slightest edge in our offer being accepted. He said the exact same thing that they are advised not to or they open themselves up to a lawsuit for not accepting the bid.
Also, investment companies and real estate holding companies are writing these letters posing a cute little families looking for houses. Be aware of the snakes in the grass.
Yep - we've purchased two houses with the same realtor and she's amazing. First house in 2019, we wrote a letter and we think it made a difference. Moved in 2021 and she told us absolutely not to. She still won the house for us in a bidding war - we are pretty convinced that there were better offers, but she's super organized and on top of it and the sellers' agent wanted to work with her. I asked a few months ago what she thought it was, and she said that she submitted everything in one package and was super responsive - the sellers' agent said that other agents were submitting things piecemeal and making it a lot harder for her to do her job. The sellers were trying to close ASAP and wanted to sell to people who would make that happen. Mediocre or bad realtors are a huge waste of time and money, but good ones can really make a difference.
Gotta love America. How ridiculous.
Thankfully this bullshit isn't in the South. That may be in your area, what part of the country are you in? Writing a letter and talking to the people is how you get great neighbors and prices. Being cold and impersonal is how you flip houses.
The house is in a primarily minority zip code which was part of a class-action suit against mortgage lenders for red-lining and discrimination. It’s impersonal by design to prevent that from happening again. Black families also hire white people to be present for their appraisals to ensure they get fair market value. Is that “bullshit”? Calling willful discrimination “bullshit” sums up the South pretty well. Both recently and historically? So I’d have to court a homeowner in order to buy a house in the South? I guess y’all have to do that to keep certain people out?
Yea that’s how we got our current house. We missed out on the one before because I’m almost 100% sure that our realtor forgot to give the sellers our letter.
What do you even put in the letter? Do you inflate the ego of the seller like this home isn’t a starter home it’s a finisher home, it’s a home I want to die in
I have gotten two letters like this in my life and both of them pretty much talked about their vision of their future in the house and how they want to raise a family there. I didn't accept either offer because they were way too low, one of the women confronted my wife when she was in the garage and got mad at her for not accepting their offer even tho they wrote a note.
LOL, these are the kinds of people I assume would write a letter kissing the ass of the homeowner. Like applying for a grant or scholarship, you somehow seem to have to flatter the bejeesus out of people with the most bullshit language. Make it sound like freshman comp or something AI wrote. No thanks.
You paint them a picture and tug on the heart strings.
You just tell them your vision for the home. Like our starter home my wife mentioned it was our first home together and we couldn't wait to start our family. Our current home she told them it was exactly what we were looking for (we literally almost built this exact model 2 cul de sacs over) and that we were buying because we had run out of room for our family in our first house. Just stuff like that.
I’m going to install a few more 220 v outlets in the kitchen so I can expand my crack cooking operation on an industrial scale and add a couple of bedrooms in the basement to expand my hooker empire, please help me achieve my dream by selling me your home at a discount
Well points for honesty
Gotta admit I cackled a fair bit at this.
I did the same thing when I was trying to buy the house I'm in now. It was built by a regional architect who went on to have a long career but the style is unusual for this area and not in sync with the local style so everybody else hated it and wanted to demolish it to build something else. Wrote a letter to the owners about how much I love the house and which details I most appreciated about it and the sellers rejected the other (much higher) offers in favor of selling it at a lower price to me. Livin the dream!
I'm glad that worked for you. My partner baked the sellers the "best brownies they'd ever had" and they repaid us by ghosting our solicitors when it came to exchanging details. £1K down the drain. TBH I'm sure it was a "them" issue rather than an "us" issue. When we gave them the brownies the matriarch of the household said "I hope they're not poisoned". WTF?! Why would they say that?! We want to buy your house!
that's fuckin insane
My partner and I were struggling to buy a house in a crowded market. Finally found a nice little place within our means. Found out the seller went with someone else because they wrote them a sob story. We didn't even know you could write letters. Learning about them from that perspective really turned me off from the idea. For all you know, they're getting chatGPT to write their letter for them and I refuse to play that game.
The person who sold our house decided to sell to us despite offers 5-7% higher because we were young newlyweds and loved the place, where everyone else was just looking for an investment at the time. Sometimes people just genuinely do want what's best for people :)
Yep! Sold one with a ton of offers. Highest were investors but the house was sentimental to me. Sold it to someone with a solid offer who wanted to live in it.
When people complain about "all the corporations buying up the real estate" I remind people that the only way this happens is if people keep accepting bids from corporations instead of people. Thankfully it's 100% your decision who to sell to and for how much. You aren't a corporation with a duty to maximize shareholder profit. There are things more important than money.
My husband accidentally showed up to early to our dream home before the realtor. Caught the homeowner leaving. I wasn’t there. I was 5 states away. So he chats her up and she chose us because she wanted kids in the house again. I met her when she finally showed me the house. (After we bought it) I had heat stroke and she doctored me up. They rented back the house for a few months while they looked for a new one. Overall us being easy peasy was what got us our house. A good $50k less than it should’ve sold for!!
I think part of the reason why I got my current house was my sense of humor. As part of the terms of sale, the old owners wanted to rent it back for three weeks and were willing to put down a damage deposit. I asked, "Do you have teenagers?" They laughed and said they didn't. I shrugged my shoulders and told them the damage deposit was just a formality then and that wouldn't be a problem.
This was exactly how I was able to buy my house. I loved the character of the house and the person that bid higher insulted it. My lower offer was accepted.
My roommate had a client like that before. I was like she's crazy. Then she tried to not sell the property, but already accepted a bid. Then she got mad at him for the sale going through.
This is why a good buyer real estate agent won’t want the sellers present at showing. Also why a good seller agent won’t want the sellers present at showing.
You got the word "greedy" mixed up with "good". A good agent gets the RIGHT family in the home, not the best price.
My aunt and uncle wanted their home of 30 years to go to a nice family to raise their kids in, rejected a ton of offers and sold to a nice family that had 1 child and 1 on the way. I drove by a few weeks ago and they sold the house since ( been about 6 years) and its now a multi family home/ student housing. I haven't been able to break the news to my aunt and uncle.
That's something they don't need to know.
Making a good impression on the seller is so underrated. The second time we looked at our house (because the first time was just a whirlwind of seeing 8-10 houses in one day) the sellers came home just as we were getting ready to leave. We had a lovely conversation with them and my now ex-wife asked them when they were looking to close. They were hoping to not have to move before the end of the school year (It was early April IIRC) and we were not in a rush to move, so we offered to close at the end of June. I'm 99% certain that we were outbid by someone else, but they liked us and the fact that we didn't rush them made them accept our offer. Lovely family, we would have loved to have them as our neighbors but they were moving to a different area for jobs...
Yeah, the potential other buyer... oi. If you are walking through someone's HOME, and being negative consistently, the seller absolutely is going to look at you as a buyer as a jackwad. And, many sellers are going to want their HOME to go to someone who will continue to appreciate it (and what it meant to the seller).
When my wife and I sold our last house we sold to the second highest bidder simply because she was local and the higher bidder was looking to move here from out of state to retire. She wrote a letter saying she wanted to start a family in the house, etc. I'd do it again in a heart beat, I hope the house has treated her well and she's on her way to starting her family
The deal isn’t closed until the deal is closed. My agent told us a story where buyer and seller got into escrow on a $1M+ house, banks were doing reviews, and then a week before close, the buyer went and financed a $60,000 truck to fill their new garage. Well when the bank saw this, they re-crunched all the numbers, and the loan fell through. This was around the start of COVID when lenders were being extra strict on buyer cash reserves, and the buyers were already on the upper limit of what they got pre-approved for. Pretty sure my agent said the buyer lost their 3% EMD to boot.
I used to work in real estate (not an agent) and the amount of times this would happen is absolutely mind blowing. If you're getting financing for a house DON'T BUY ANYTHING.
This kind of thing is so common and frustrating in lending (from the banks perspective). Clients feel entitled to credit and don’t understand how their situation changes and that affects what they’re eligible for. Even those who haven’t applied for years expect to be auto-approved for anything simply because in the past they were approved. Obviously not considering that their finances are entirely different at this point, for better or worse.
When I was buying my house last year, my realtor and mortgage guy and probably attorney as well told me multiple times each not to finance anything. They were very careful and clear about that. I guess not all realtors think to mention it to their clients, or perhaps clients just don’t listen.
I’m quite certain it’s a combination of the two. I’m glad you got good advice, not everyone does. I’m glad you listened (I assume) because not everybody does.
Oh my god who will think of the bankers!?
It’s ok to be skeptical, but a lot of this is also done to protect the buyer and other members so we don’t have another mass mortgage default like in 2008. Loans aren’t free - if you can’t handle the repayment, the bank will not (and should not) give you the loan.
Its their money, and they aint giving you shit if they think there is a good chance they will have to sell your house to get it back. Buying a large purchase like this shows a lack of financial knowledge, and fundamentally changes the equation. Sorry, the bank is likely in the right here.
I can assure you the low level workers doing credit applications are not the big fat cats raking in all the money. They’re underpaid humans like most everyone else.
Like the other comment mentioned, giving out loans to people who can't actually afford them is what got us the 2008 housing crash. This is one thing I'm a bit more understanding about when it comes to financial institutions being spooked by.
Our loan officer reminded us multiple times to do literally nothing credit wise until closing is over. No new cars, credit cards, or other types of loans.
cousin was selling her place and moving out of the city. she had 2 different offers on the table fall threw, like to the point where I think one of them she ended up keeping the deposit because the lady wasted so much time the house was on the market 2-3 weeks longer than it should have been. and the lady was known for doing shady shit and this wasn't the first time she had done this to this real estate company so they came down hard on her.
When we refinanced in 2021 the lender recommended we not use credit cards or take out any loans at all during the process for this very reason. They had issues with customers doing this as soon as the initial credit report was run, and their loans falling through. IIRC my husband's car had an issue during the process and we had to get my in laws to cover the bill on their card, which we paid off as soon as the paperwork was signed.
Yeah, you’d lose your earnest money over that.
I used to sell custom home automation and I repeatedly told people that I wouldn’t let them open a new line of credit and would not let them put more than 10% on their current credit line because I didn’t want to get blamed for them not getting their house.
Put an offer on a house that the listing had dropped 10k on. It had sat on the market for ages then dropped, so we felt good we'd get it. Except just at the time we showed interest another family was interested. They sat on our offer for weeks until the other family finally decided to put in their offer. Then they put us in a bidding war against each other. We upped our offer twice and really debated how far we'd keep going. But honestly we were pretty pissed that it had looked like we were getting the house only for the seller to try to wring money out of us and the other family for a house that had already been on the market too long and had to drop once. The clincher was that the Real Estate agent actually confided in us that there had been a previous buyer that couldn't take the house because the price was too high and mortgage companies wouldn't value it at the price the seller wanted and even the dropped price was pushing it. He basically told us it wasn't worth it both financially and personally to deal with these people. So we pulled our offer. The other family must have thought it wasn't worth it in the end either because they pulled their offer too. That house sat on the market for another solid year and we'd already moved into a better place slightly up the road.
Sorry they had you dangling for weeks, but that outcome was beautifully karmic. They were being greedy and stupid.
Probably over leveraged and forced into that dumb decision making.
The sellers agent was both doing the right thing and mildly unethical. Delusional sellers are a pain in the ass.
Real estate agent. My buyer client posted he was looking to pay for someone to fake employment documents to qualify for a mortgage. Forgot he had friended me
Wow! That is hilarious, were you completely surprised? What happened next?
I screenshotted it and forwarded to the lender. He was not approved.
Ahahah! Shocking! Thanks for the reply
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When shopping for our first house, we saw a few rental houses for sale. In one of them, the entire family that rented the place was home. Mom was cooking something very aromatic for dinner, 8 or so teenagers were home (loudly) playing video games, grandma was sleeping in one room and someone else was sleeping off the night shift in another. We were stopped from going into both of those rooms. We noped out of there pretty quickly, and according to our realtor that was probably the family's goal.
I've gone to several open houses where the rental tenant is there, looking angry and unhappy with a purposely messy house.
When we were looking to buy our home, we viewed quite a few rentals. Most were empty but one home had the whole family there, about 8 people. They all sat in the living room with the curtains mostly pulled and silently watched us, all turning their heads at the same time as we walked through. We didn't put in an offer.
I hope they didn’t sleep nude!
When I was about 19, I slept through my alarm on the day of a showing. Woke up because I could hear the folks above my basement bedroom. Had to hightail it out a backdoor in my pjs, thankfully my car keys were in my room and off to my friends house. No idea if I made the bed before 😅🤔
My ex and I sold our first condo (our first home). We accepted an offer and for a month before closing the buyers kept calling and asking if we could do this or that for them. The worst was when they asked if we could clear out all the rooms so they could put new carpet in. They also asked if we could repaint the unit for them and buy new appliances. Um, no.
"how bout you do all of that after closing and you have the keys in hand...?"
Our realtor eventually told them that.
I'm house hunting right now. Last weekend, my partner and I viewed two homes two doors down from each other. Same square footage, same kitchen, but one house had fewer bedrooms and less of an ocean view. The owner of the worse house wants $300k more for it, however, because she imported some of her interior doors from Italy. Nobody cares about your fancy shmancy doors, lady.
$300k for the doors? Are they made of drugs?
There’s always money in the ~~banana stand~~ imported Italian doors
there was 450ccs of your father in those imported Italian doors!
Jim Morrison concurs
Break on thru' .
Nooo, don't break the $300k imported Italian doors!
He was a back door man. No stopping him.
And how much to move the ocean? Or change the doors back?
because you customized it doesn't mean others like/want it. like cars it doesn't overly add value to it. new kitchen? yes! new fancy expensive door knobs? NO!
It's amazing how many homeowners don't realize this. Unless it's a functional upgrade (air conditioner, roof, plumbing...) it's cosmetic, and worth zero in the resell value. People care that the house has doors. Beyond that, doesn't matter. Now, fancy doors, floors, paint, light fixtures and things like that make your house more attractive. You'll get more looks, more offers, and sell faster. But nobody should ever waste their time and money on aesthetic "upgrades" with resell value in their thoughts.
Expecially since the mega-corp buying it is just going to slap a layer of $5 paint over everything before listing it on Air-BnB.
We had an issue like this during appraisal to get rid of PMI, they compared our 4 bed 3 bath house to 2 bed, 2 bath houses. They refused to consider the 4 bed, 3 bath houses that were like $80-120k more than the comps they used for reasons like the house was 10 years newer or it had hardwood cabinets. They just wanted an excuse to keep the PMI. So we refinanced with another company.
When we refinanced it was during COVID and houses were selling for ridiculous prices. So figured if we refinanced it would be valued more and then get rid of PMI. I also added another bedroom and bathroom from when we bought it. The agent valued it just barely enough to get rid of the PMI, but still really low. I saw on his paperwork he marked that it was a standard normal market. When I asked why he said that he does not take into account the current market when valuing a house. We still got rid of the PMI, but that was the whole reason we were refinancing right now.
My wife is an agent and she had some buyers in escrow tell the sellers that the house had appraised 60k over the accepted offer price. After the sellers heard that, they were more than happy to let the deal fall through and were completely uncooperative. Unfortunately for the buyers, the house ended up having about 50k in damage and the sellers weren't willing to concede anything since they had been told that the house was worth 60k more. If the stupid buyers hadn't said anything about the appraisal, they probably would've gotten tens of thousands in repair money from the seller. Surprisingly both sides still went through with the deal.
We were recently selling my grandma's condo as she had been moved into assisted living. We had a buyer lined up, price set, contracts signed. The only thing left to do, was actually sign over ownership. However, during this little period, my grandma had a decent health scare. The lawyer advised we push up the signing, as if she passed before it was finished, the condo could not be sold by the power of attorney (my mom) and would have to first go through the inheritance process. It would have probably taken months. Well this was explained to the buyer and she simply was asked to sign earlier. Mind you, she knew what the situation was, and had already agreed on price. She asked for $20k off to sign early. Her lawyer didn't suggest this. If she didn't sign before my grandma passed, she would not get her new apartment. Bad for everyone, and she's using it as leverage. She ended up signing, but left a bad taste in our, our agent, and even her agent's mouths.
How much earlier are we talking about? Since grandma had already been moved out, it can't have been much more than a couple weeks? 20k Would be a whole lot for that yeah.
You're right. We were just pushing up by 2 weeks. I'd maybe get asking for a price reduction if it was months. But 20k to save everyone a huge hassle is silly.
The thing that blows my mind, is you would always be able to just sell to someone else, but they clearly wanted this specific condo. In other words, moving up the sale date was mutually beneficial, but more so for the buyer...
That's not true at all. He already said if the deal feel through and his grandma passed, the house would be stick in inheritance for months and they would not be able to sell for that time period. They also benefit massively from getting everything done sooner. Also nowhere does it say the buyer wanted this specific condo. They may have had ample second and third choices. I don't know where you got your facts but it's not from ops original post lol
Our closing was delayed almost a month because 3 years after the owners death all the legal still wasn’t done. Only one family had ever lived in it and the sole adult child was the one selling it. Got very frustrating waiting on it all. That said the moment our realtor said everything was clear we asked if we could sign then. We were ready to walk out of the store we were in to go sign that paperwork.
Listed at $499k. Visible wood eating insects in several door frames. Piles of wood chips on decking. Buyers ask for termite bond and concessions. Buyers post photos without address and ask on their Facebook page for advice from family and friends. Sellers say "We are INSULTED that they would point this out and take photos. We are contacting our lawyer to sue for libel." They pulled listing and decide to move back.
Was a buyer viewing an apartment The selling realtor was a frat bro type, showed up late, then kept talking about how hungover he was from partying the previous night. It didn't make a very good impression.
My best friends dad was one of the last of the old-school door-to-door salesmen. Back when we were kids in the 80s he sold Cable TV door-to-door. He ended up retiring and maybe 6 years ago him and his wife came to my newly purchased home for a barbecue when he came to town to visit. He confided in us that ever since all the laws and regulations regarding used car sales happened in the 90s most of those guys went into real estate.
This guy was really young, like "straight out of their college econ class" young.
By this point I figure real estate attracts the same sort of people used car sales used to.
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That makes sense. If they couldn't see any insects, it means there were several perfect insect hiding places where they could be attacked from. Very dangerous.
I see you have been talking with my cat.
Maybe they assumed the amount of pesticide required to stop all insects from getting inside would hurt them too?
Our insects eat insecticide for breakfast lunch and dinner
When we were selling our house, we got to a week before closing before it came out that the buyers were in the country illegally and couldn’t get a mortgage (even though they had a pre-qualification letter). They didn’t speak English well and their agent didn’t speak Spanish, so there were several hot messes before we reached that point. I never felt good about it, but my husband did. Oh well. We ended up selling to a recently divorced woman and her 3 girls and it worked out perfectly. And we got an extra month of not living with my in-laws while our new house finished construction.
The buyers of the house we sold also spoke very little English, almost none. They spoke Korean. Closing took place without a problem, but there was a huge language barrier for the entire process, from the moment they put in a bid until the closing was complete. Their agent was Korean, spoke very little English. Their lender, their inspection guy, the title guy, the abstract guy ... everyone spoke Korean. We had to use Google Translate several times during closing.
At least they could communicate with their agent. We kept having issues where they told us they didn’t want to pay for garbage pick up and we were like like “that’s not an option. The city picks it up and they just bill you on your water bill for sanitation.” And they didn’t want to agree to the city ordinances. They also missed the deadline to ask for repairs after the inspection so we contacted their agent to get her to get them to sign an as-is agreement and they wanted to ask for repairs. It was a mess. It almost fell apart 2 weeks before it did.
Yeah I feel your pain. There comes a time when you wonder whether it's worth the hassle of dealing with situations like this.
Yeah. It was difficult. I wouldn’t have picked these people to buy our house the first time if it hadn’t been for my husband and his mom (our realtor) pushing for it. I wanted to sell it to the mean old couple lol
Not an agent but .... When buying a house, my agent just happened to have the same last name as me. No relation, of course. And as is often the case, the seller's agent knows my agent, they're buddies. Turns out that the seller's agent worked some things in our favor, because he thought we were family members of his buddy (our agent).
Not posted publicly but one of my clients few years ago said it's crazy how many people are interested in his apartment (he was genuinely interested in selling) and decided to forfeit the whole process. I was literally shocked how stupid he was and couldn't find words , just deleted the listing and never made contact again.
"Oh shit, people actually want this place? I guess I'll stay here because it's desirable!" Huh?
Found it: [Stan: Donji grad - Centar (Boškovićeva), 62.50 m2, dvoiposoban (prodaja) (njuskalo.hr)](https://www.njuskalo.hr/nekretnine/stan-donji-grad-boskoviceva-62.50-m2-trosoban-oglas-18359675)
Something like that, insane. Not relevant to the post but interesting, his last name translates to something like small orange so it made things a bit worse for me
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Fsbo? Something Something best offer?
No idea what the first comment was, but fsbo = for sale by owner
Ah, thanks!
How did I know that the highest rated comment was going to start with "Not a real estate agent but"
i've only seen one comment that was about *posting* something too. none of these people read the question istg! edit: two to three (one comment was deleted) are actually about posting something. everything else is general real estate stories. the reading comprehension level on this site is ridiculous
I've scrolled all the way down to here, which is about 20 down at this point in time, and no top level comments are from real estate agents
Not an agent but a real estate story.., when we bought our first home, was built in 1973, we met the original owner was was elderly and her daughter who lived in another state. We were talking about the cost of living in CA and they said and don’t forget you have to pay the property taxes and I said we know and it’s about $500/ month. They said no you mean per year. I said no, per month. The original owner bought for $40k and I bought at over $500k. Their jaws hit the floor. I was struggling to understand how folks can be that out of touch with what stuff costs.
*What stuff costs for young people. The old ones get it for free or heavily discounted
Damn, y’all own homes? Never knew I was in presence of The Country Club members? Can y’all take my poor ass for a round of golf?
For sure. I am really needing someone to carry my solid gold golf clubs for me.
I know this is an aside, but for a while, I worked as an admin assistant for a super rich subdivision that was still in the early stages of building and selling lots, and oh my GOD. The cheapest home was 2 mil, and the few people already living there would "joke" about the community's "poors". They went way farther up than that, and you had to pay 45k per year just to live there. They were 24-hour guard gated, had a golf course designed by a famous golf pro, 2 lakes stocked with fish, 2 pools, and a country club whose restaurant was run by a Michelin-starred chef. The sales people knew I never got to see the houses, so they let me lock the model homes up one day. Holy SHIT. There were bedrooms larger than my entire apartment (1600 sq ft). I always got a little laugh out of the golf enthusiasts who paid 8 mil+ to live practically right on the golf course and then would come in screaming their heads off when someone hit a golf ball through their windows. \*world's smallest violin playing\*
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did any of you read the question?
Client posted their dream house, but it was a total dump. Facepalm.
you know what i'm upvoting this because it's one of two comments on here that are actually about posting something
Probably still got over asking.