Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Delicious_Score_551 t1_j5tq5zv wrote

Reply to comment by 1234nameuser in The inventory of houses suck by KindaEgotistical

This is also a good reason TO buy now. If you do decide to try a purchase .. bargain hard, be ready to walk. Use the crap market as a weapon.

Use all of the arguments that ^ you've used above to tell the seller: "I know how bad the market is. You make me a deal or I'm walking. As one of the few people willing to risk it in this market. Prices are expected to fall 15% - and I'm willing to take all the risk at a X% discount on your price or I walk. I'll come back when your home falls 20% in value .. and buy it from you then for less than I just offered today. Your call."

Sometimes doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing can be used to your advantage.

9

TheOtherMark t1_j5ty49l wrote

Those are valid negotiation strategies, and they can protect you from walking into bad deals. But in the meantime, the other buyers are offering above asking price, waiving inspections, or they're corporate landlords/flippers making all-cash offers.

The sellers will still go after the easy money. So playing hardball and walking is fine, but you're still basically waiting for an irrational market to calm TF down.

7

b_writes t1_j5yu7x3 wrote

100%. Even though the market sucks, there’s still a fucking ton of other people that are also interested in buying and they don’t care.

We bought earlier in the year but I’ll always remember a house we looked at in a “less than desirable” town that backed a lot owned by the town and was being remedied for contaminated soil (which of course was not listed anywhere in the listing). The lot sloped into this house’s backyard and we were concerned that the house’s soil was contaminated too, so asked the realtor if the owners were willing to do a soil test to ensure the backyard was safe (as it also had a well). The realtor laughed and said that they already had multiple offers waiving any inspections so a soil test was the last thing on their mind. A few days later, the house sells and a family with four young kids is posted by the realtor congratulating them on their purchase.

So yeah, unfortunately, even asking for basic safety net things is still out the window in this market.

3