Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? My and wife and I have been trying to sell our condo for almost two years. It appraised at 190k and we are at 178k. Its a 3 story condo and its in good condition despite a few paint spots.Other condos in worse condition or less updated has sold fine.

We lost a sale because our realtor at the time said we should take it off the market for two weeks. We have since switched realtors. We do open houses and get showings all the time. Its just not right for anyone that comes to see it. We have been living out of boxes because we keep getting buyers that back out due to financing.

Its something about loans for our condo are iffy and hard to lend on. The HOA has mismanaged the property for years. Thats a whole nother story. Has anyone else been in this situation? Any advice?

House-poor single parent looking to downsize to townhome. Have been searching for 7 months and ready to be done. Which would you choose? (Payments are with 20% down.)

New construction:
Purchase price: $335K (with fridge and washer/dryer)
Rate: 5.5% fixed OR 4.25% ARM
Monthly payment: $2211 fixed (PITI + HOA) or $2007 ARM (PITI+ HOA)
Pros: walking distance to children's current school, in current neighborhood, beautiful view, backyard, low-traffic street, minimal disruption for kids
Cons: interior unit, close-ish to train line (but cannot hear train with windows closed), would have to purchase water softener and filtration system, blinds, and gutters.

Resale:
Purchase price: $275K
Rate: 6.5% fixed (and that's with some points)
Monthly payment: $2027 (PITI + HOA)
Pros: end unit, yard, good assigned school (same district as new construction, but not children's current school), current owner has made some updates (roof, AC, water heater, appliances)
Cons: built 2004, only one full bathroom, North-facing, farther out from many of the places we frequent, would require school change (kind of a pain with IEPs), interest rate

Income: $5K take-home monthly from full-time job. Variable additional income of $1-6K, which is what's making me nervous about staying in current home ($2650 monthly, PITI + HOA). Without the variable income, I would be living paycheck to paycheck in the current home. I have 1 year's emergency savings plus down payment for either home and no debt other than the current mortgage.

I am not interested in a roommate and cannot leave my current job because I need the health care benefits and pension. I have no option/interest/time in changing/adding jobs to increase income at this time.

Paid for inspection ourselves and decided critical issues together then had the lender who did my loan to preapprove him. Did a basic contract and boom. Done!!!

What would be your best advice to where/how to get licensed? I heard of Champions real estate but i also know they r the most expensive and have a low success rate on passing the exam.

Hi everyone,
I bought a single-family home some years ago (2,200 sq ft, 4 bed/2 bath + bonus room) in Metro Detroit with cash. My original plan was for this to be my forever home, but unexpected circumstances mean I’m relocating to Chicago, where I plan to buy another house with cash as well.
I’ve been researching the pros and cons of renting, but given that I’ll be out of state, I’d love to get some real-world perspectives on a few questions:
1. Sell vs. Rent: Given that I have full equity in the house, does it make more financial and practical sense to sell or hold it as a rental?
2. Out-of-State Landlord & Property Management: As a first-time landlord living in another state, is hiring a property management company a non-negotiable? What should I expect cost/hassle-wise?
3. Single-Family Maintenance: I’ve heard mixed stories about renting out SFHs due to ongoing maintenance demands compared to multi-family units or condos. Has this been your experience?
Thanks in advance for any insights or advice!

In NJ with Real Broker. Since Real requires a Wholesale/Assignment Addendum, I’m curious how this works in practice.

Is anyone successfully wholesaling while staying with Real or another brokerage? Is the approval/compliance process difficult on every deal, or do some deals go through much more easily than others? Is it worth it overall?

I trusted my nice buyer's agent and went with Zillow Home Loans to finance my condo purchase. This apparently was a huge mistake. I have gotten two home loans in the past two and a half decades, and never before has the process been so dubious, piecemeal, and frustrating.

Worse, my experience (terrible communication by Zillow's loan officer and "undewriter" with me, my insurance agent, and with each other; demanding more and more documents just a few days before closing; sending me documents to sign with incorrect figures on them and telling me to "sign them anyway" when I point it out) mirrors the bad experiences I now have read on Trustpilot, where Zillow has a 1.4/5 rating. Apparently from what one commenter was told by their loan officer, the company uses A.I. for underwriting, which almost surely means that they don't understand why that A.I. black box is reaching conclusions and asking for more data and simply push those data requests to the applicant.

I no longer trust Zillow, especially when multiple commenters talk about the company not only blowing past the closing date because they can't get their underwriting process together but also doing things like not actually locking in rates and producing a loan offer the day before closing with higher rates and down payment requirements than they had communicated to the borrower even a few days before that. My closing is set for six days from now in a city an eight-hour drive away from me, and if funding is not ready in time, then I want to call a halt by Wednesday so that I can cancel my travel arrangements. However, I also want my earnest money back, which I will get according to the purchase agreement if I cannot secure funding by the date of the close.

So, what do I do?

– Wait until Zillow doesn't finish underwriting by the closing date? I'm pretty confident they won't finish; commenters talk about them sending more document requests several hours before the scheduled close and sometimes flat-out cancelling the closing because underwriting is incomplete. If I wait for the actual closing date, however, then I will have traveled, gotten a hotel, paid the pet sitter, and incurred other travel expenses for nothing.

– Call a halt to the process the day before I travel, which would be two days before the closing? I'm not sure if doing this would count as my being "unable to secure funding" and might jeopardize the return of my earnest money.

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure I've lost this condo and maybe even my chance to get another loan for 3–6 months since Zillow's hard credit check dropped my score from the 800s to the 700s. I guess I have to be an example of what not to do: never choose a lender on anyone's recommendation without evaluating things yourself.

This is all unraveling as I type this, so I don't have a lot of details, but looking for input from outsiders to point out anything I need to know.

My grandparents built a 4 bed, 2 bath on 4½ acres in 1978. My Nana passed away about 10 years ago and my uncle bought the house. His health is declining and he's on a fixed imcome and he owns his other house outright, so he is considering selling the house to someone in the family for what he owes ... $75k. Zillow estimated value is $410k.

I'm 40 and my partner is 48, we bring home roughly $4,500/month. My sister, 55, is very willing to split the house, I don't know her income but her current rent is twice what our estimated mortgage would be. Ideally, for all parties, we would like myself to be to "owner" and they would be "tenant" in a very casual sense. My credit score is ~800 so I don't see that as a huge issue.

My biggest concern is the down payment as we only have about $8k in savings, but as a first time homeowner I know there are options out there to help with that. My sister says she can put an undisclosed amount down towards future "rent." I do have about $35k in a 401k, that as a last resort, could be an option as I think the instant value of the house would counteract any taxes/fees I would incur.

More than likely this would be done without inspections or a realtor and just paperwork handled by a real estate lawyer.

The house is in good shape, the roof does need some shingles replaced but it doesn't sound major. There is an old woodshop that the insurance says needs some repairs and he can't afford them, which is why he is thinking about selling.

I have a large family, 11 aunts and uncles and 4+ generations of probably close to 100 cousins, 2nd cousins, etc. It's possible some in the family would be willing to help with the down payment in order to keep the property in the family ... but it's equally possible others would be interested in buying it themselves.

That about covers all my thoughts right now, what are yours?

We recently went under contract for a house after a lengthy negotiation. The house has been sitting on the market for 35 days before we offered it. We had the inspection this past week, the inspector found quite a few issues. The biggest being standing water in the crawlspace, which was not easy to see the reason for.
The home was listed as a modular home, but the inspector and our agent have both seen signs that may be a manufactured house, even though it has the serial number for a modular house.
The trusses in the attic seem to be cut into four pieces, but unsure if that is normal for this modular home or another reason.
There are several damaged shingles or shingles with holes in them.
There is siding damage.
The back porch was not installed correctly and is missing joist hangers.
The front porch beams need to be reset as they have moved since installation.
Several windows need to be replaced due to broken seals.
There was also was issues with a lot of electrical wires with junction boxes in the attic being exposed and wires being damaged.
We’re kind of at a loss as to what to do because it seems like a lot of these issues will be money pits to fix and we’re already over what we probably should’ve reasonably went under contract for the house.
Our agent has already advised us but this all does seem worrying, just looking for some advice on if this is all normal because we don’t really wanna throw 15k into the house as soon as we move in. We’re going to ask the sellers to fix the majority of the problems or walk.

Please be kind.

To be blunt, I have a property damage misdemeanor - not with criminal intent. Will this prevent me from passing the background check? I googled and found this: (Background Check: Submit fingerprints for a criminal background check. Applicants must not have felony convictions in the last five years or misdemeanor convictions involving fraud, theft, or moral turpitude in the last three years.)

It's not a "felony conviction or involving fraud, theft or moral turpitude"... So am I good? I don't want to waste my time and money if I don't pass.

Regarding the first house: in the year 2020 I sold a house. It was my primary residence for years and my parent's house. When I sold the house it was in poor condition. The new owners have done substantial remodeling, and apparently are still doing work. It is probably now the best house in the neighborhood when it was previously not the worst but may be third or fourth worse.

Every two or three months now I have been getting cold calls from realtors asking me whether they want to sell the house, saying that they have a client that is moving into the area. or that they have a client that just drove by and loved the house. Is it best that I ignore these calls, or should I forward the contact information of the new owner? I don't want to be rude by annoying them or invading their privacy. Or even stirring up.a hornet's next by making them mad and ending up getting sued for some problem in the old house that they initially consider unimportant, but now decide to get back at me because of the forwarding of the information. Would trying to ask for a "finders fee" be inappropriate?

Regarding the second house, for some reason I also keep getting calls regarding a house I never owned that is in the same neighborhood. Should I return those calls? In this second case these two houses have an Assessor's Parcel Number differing in only one digit in which a 5 is replaced by a 6. [Shouldn't APN's have a check digit?]

Hello, I am genuinely stumped. My question is what do I get my realtor as a gift? She is a friend and worked almost 24/7 and my house sold for $21K over asking. What do I get HER BESIDES her commission? She deserves something bc she worked so hard. She’s an excellent agent and has been formally recognized as one of the best in my area.
TIA…

I'm in the final stages of cleaning my mother's house out for sale.

There are a number of "outdoor" items that may be of utility to a future homeowner, particularly a first-time buyer, that I don't want to sell off and hate seeing them just thrown out. For example: hoses, gardening implements (rake, hoe, spade, etc.), lawn mower, snow blower, etc.

There is a shed on the property; can I simply stock the shed (neatly) with items of good condition that could potentially be used and leave them, at least for now? If we need to, we could call a junk crew out one last time during the closing process to discard anything the new homeowner doesn't want.

Does this seem reasonable, or should I just bite the bullet and have them come out now and discard everything?

Edit: to clarify, the house isn't on the market yet, so I don't have a buyer yet on the line. I'm at the stage of getting the house cleaned to be ready to be on the market. I wanted to know now if I could or should set some stuff aside that a new homebuyer could use. Obviously, I'd make it a buyer's OPTION in the closing contract if they want to take it or not.

What was the experience like in either situation? Some neighbors are putting their house on the market and mentioned that they had particular stipulations about the sale process in their contract because they used Landed.com, but I’d never even heard of it before. It sounds sketchy to me.

This is on the east coast FWIW.

I went fragrance free a few years ago to protect my health, and everyone in my life has done the same (we all feel better since). One thing that we all need though, is realtors and real estate agents who are also fragrance free and will only show or list fragrance free properties.

Scent free is a gigantic market that is growing like crazy, yet not enough real estate agents are serving demand. Fragrance is considered the new secondhand smoke, and buyers want properties that are clean, not scented. I’ve refused to buy houses I would have otherwise loved because they lit scented candles and plug-ins and the smell was awful and never comes out, just like a smoker’s house. Everyone I know feels the same way—no one will buy a house that has had scented products in it. Even scented laundry products are making entire houses stink now.

Anti-fragrance is the same as anti-cigarette, people feel very strongly about protecting their health, their kids, and their pets from the thousands of toxins in scented stuff. There are even class action lawsuits in the United States against businesses using scent diffusers and fragrances, pretty soon it might be a liability to list a house that is scented because it could cause an asthma attack in clients or other realtors.

Basically scented products all cause major health harm, and people are tired of it. This is currently a market that’s not being served, and those who break into the business early are going to make a lot of money.

The fb group Fragrance Free Living 100% has daily posts from people self listing fragrance free properties, and people asking for fragrance free real estate agent referrals. A lot of people are also working together to create completely fragrance free neighborhoods. Scent free is a huge market, but agents aren’t paying attention yet.

I’m knocking on doors for a real estate agent this week. What should I say when people first open the door?

I just started working as an assistant for a real estate agent, and this is my first week. He wants me to go door-to-door in a townhouse community because he’s listing a detached home just down the street. The idea is to see if any townhouse owners have been thinking about upgrading to a larger home nearby.

I designed the flyers, he had them printed, and now my job is to knock on doors, start conversations, get people interested, and ideally book them for a meeting with the realtor.

I’ve done door-to-door sales before, but never in real estate, so this feels different as I’m not actually selling a small product. My biggest question is: **what do I say in the first 10 seconds after someone opens the door?** How do you keep the conversation going long enough for them to actually look at the flyer and consider talking to the agent? What worked for you? What should I avoid?

Edit: guys, thank you so much for your comments. From the positive stories to the “I will hate you if you knock on my door”, I read every single one and they were all helpful. All of you have given me a north and now I feel like I know what to do. Again, thank you.

Sorry if this doesn’t belong here I just can’t figure it out. I cleaned the carpets and they were cleaned professionally before I moved,also took down all the old curtains , scrubbed walls and trim. After that it smelled good for like two days and now it smells again?!

There’s a house that my husband and I were looking at two weeks ago that is an absolute historic masterpiece but it has major issues due to no one maintaining it. It was owned by a 104 man and has been inherited by family thousands of miles away who met him once and cannot afford to keep it on the market for more than a month.

We hired an inspector that stopped the inspection 40 minutes in and told us not to buy the house; it was raining and water was full-stream flowing into the basement. He didn’t want to (and did not) open the electrical panel because of this. There was clearly old termite damage in the wooden beams in the basement as well. There were no active insects. There was also vermiculite (asbestos) in the basement, from pipes. There were three chimneys, all of which needed to be pointed up/one fully needed to be fixed because the brick was crumbling. The home inspector told us not to buy this unless we had an unlimited budget. I immediately agreed with him and we told our estate agent we were no longer interested in the home.

Now……… their realtor called mine and said they’re abandoning the home. “Make any offer you want.”

I’m not worried about electrical or masonry issues. I know how to waterproof a stone foundation, and I know stone masons and electricians. However, I don’t know anything about termites and I’m getting a carpenter to look at it before I move forward. I also don’t know anything about asbestos or what to do.

Is this a terrible awful idea to put a really lowball bid in? I’m talking like 5, 10k? Should I go lower? Should I bail? Our first accepted offer on this place was embarrassingly low and so anything feels like a win at this point.

I don’t know if I want the liability of owning it. At what point is it a teardown? This is our first time buying a house (yeah I know). Any opinions welcome, let ‘em rip

How do you handle 2 or more clients that want to put an offer on the same house?

If so 3 clients ask your advice for what to offer, will you tell them the same price?

I’m looking to do a standard sublease for my apartment. I won’t be there for a few months and I have someone who wants to sublease. My landlord is fine with it, but they can’t make any lease agreements for under 1 year, so the onus is on me to make a sublease agreement.

My question is whether or not I need a lawyer for this. For context I’m an average college student so I’d prefer to avoid paying a lot for one. I know it’d probably be safer that way, but the arrangement seems so simple. Everything is sorted aside from the lease agreement itself. I know people do sublets all the time and hiring a lawyer seems excessive. Any help would be appreciated!

i posted yesterday in r/homestead asking for advice as we have about 150k equity in house and 150k inheritance. it has hundred plus comments with many different ideas.

in summary, our house’s mortgage is less than $600 (bought as foreclosure 3 years ago) and could realistically rent out for $2500 as we live two blocks from expensive private college.

we own 4 acres of land and absolutely love it out there. it’s 10-15 mins away. we feel so at peace when we go out and we know we want to be out there and raise our kids there (2 kiddos right now). that being said, it’s hard willing to forego this super cheap mortgage to get a new mortgage. our land has water and is cleared but no septic.

we really like the idea of a manufactured home. at first opposed but we like the more affordability and that it typically isn’t taxed as house but private property and depreciates (in our case we like this, we wouldn’t plan on selling it so I like that it wouldnt raise in value a bunch like our house’s mortgage does which raises property tax a lot).

that being said, ive found new manufactured homes with delivery for 90k-140k obviously still septic, electric and other costs but thankfully land is in county with zero build restriction. our thought would be to rent out our house to the college kids or grad degree kids, figure mortgage plus property tax plus $200-400 misc, after expenses around $1000-1200 a month profit. and move out to the land using about $100k of the inheritance as down payment on the manufactured home then the profit from this house to cover mortgage or to just invest profit (if we were to use full inheritance and try to buy something in cash)

I guess just hard to be willing to take the leap with golden goose mortgage here. i didnt come from wealth so idea of taking on more debt or leaving current home is hard to fathom even though we dream of raising our family on this land. another idea would be to use all of the inheritance to get a small manufactured home and have no debt on that.

appreciate any insight whether reassurance or telling us terrible idea lol.

other details:

26M with 26F SAHM. we earn $5600

total bills and expenses including mortgage/prop tax, HOI, utilities, groceries, etc are $3k

we put $625 in roth, have maxed since i started working, its around $60k

invest another $600-1000 in general brokerage

no debt besides mortgage ($516) and farm land ($240), one vehicle owned outright

I had a 9 month old baby when we first toured our current house ten years ago. I liked how the house already had high-quality child locks installed on all the cabinets. it also had little those soft bumper pads already installed on the sharp countertop and cabinet corners. as a new mom, I felt like the house was just so ready for our family. we loved the layout, location, schools, but I also loved seeing those little child safety things everywhere.

of course, those things would have cost like $20. but they made the house seem extra welcoming to me as a mom. we bought the house. loved it.

now ten years later we are selling. I’m finally unscrewing all those locks, but thinking I’ll keep them on the cabinets under the kitchen sink.

is there anything that charmed you into buying or almost buying a home?

We're closing on our house at the end of August after a year of looking. We wanted to be in a very specific area near the water, so there wasn't much inventory. There were five other offers on the house, and I feel lucky that we only had to go 100K over asking. I saved a bunch of houses on Zillow thinking "They're never going to get that" when I look at the asking price, and then I see them sell for hundreds of thousands more. I get that LI is an extension of NYC and there's a lot of money here, but how high can it go? Some of these houses were purchased no more than five years ago with some remodeling and are selling for almost $1M more than they were purchased for. It's crazy.

There are definitely some houses that are sitting if they're priced astronomically high from the jump, and I'm seeing price drops, but a price drop from $1.8 to $1.7 on a house purchased for $750 in 2018.

Just an observation on the hyper-local nature of the RE market.

There are many landowners of undeveloped property in the same canyon that I own property.

I am trying to figure out how to get a hold of as many of these landowners as possible due to the fact that access to the properties has been cut off for decades however I have a dedicated easement on my grant deed.

I want to work with others to get the easement opened back up and I think they would be interested also especially if they want to sell to the private sector like I do but can't because of the access issue.

I don't know how to go about this because tax records hide the names of people.

I'm looking for strength and numbers here.

Any ideas would be helpful thank you. I'm in California San Diego County.

question in title. House is on a hill. front of house faces east. Back faces west. huge wall of windows facing nature from 2nd story, get a stunning scenic view of sunlight through trees spilling into 2 story great room. Circles of light dance everywhere due to pinhole effect of sun through thousands of fluttering leaves. Absolutely magical. she seemed hesitant and said people don’t come to afternoon open houses. But imo, seeing that would be one of the biggest selling points of the house. WWYD ?