These buyers faced a long journey to a very happy ending! I started working with this very nice couple almost a year ago in search for their first home. At the very beginning of the search, that market was still a bit slow, but very soon after the market really started to pick up just as they were starting to find homes that they wanted to buy.
All the homes of interest had multiple offers and were going higher in price than they wanted to pay for a home. There was a time there were about 3 homes in the same neighborhood and each one got multiple offers for prices that were over what they wanted to pay for each home.
After some time, they found a house and the sellers were out of town. The agent was expecting multiple offers, but it was just one of those things where the timing was just perfect to get an offer in and accepted before other offers came in since the sellers were hard to reach being out of the country.
That deal was going quite smoothly UNTIL the appraiser came out to appraise the home. Unfortunately, in the appraisal world, if there are not sales in the neighborhood exactly like the subject property, the appraisers just do not seem to know what to do. The appraisers have no skill in coming up with a proper value when there are no supporting sold homes in the neighborhood that are just like the subject home.
So, unfortunately, the buyers got screwed because the appraiser came up with homes that were nothing like the subject property, a couple MUCH smaller homes, and not in the same location as the subject property, and somehow came up with a value of over $100k less than the purchase price. Also, in the lender world these days, it’s virtually impossible to work with a bank and appraiser to get the value up. Once it comes in, all efforts to fight it or give the lender and appraiser supporting comps are just a waste of time and effort. Well, we gave it our best shot, but unfortunately the appraiser and bank would not budge. This was simply a case of a very stable neighborhood in which owners live in their home for many years and just don’t sell their home. So, there was just absolutely nothing that had sold in the neighborhood for a very long time and the appraiser was just lost.
After that experience, the buyers decided to buy a brand new home in a beautiful hillside community in San Jose. They were able to pick their location, not compete with other buyers, and not deal with whacky appraisers. They were able to hand pick their style choice, amenities, flooring, colors, etc for their home and get exactly what they wanted in a home. And, they got to see their home built from the foundation up to their now gorgeous home. It was a long search, but well worth the wait for the home that they bought.
It took about 5 months to build and the value in the community has shot up drastically. They got about $5,000 off the list price of this home and even that had to be begged and pleaded for because the sales person was pretty adament on the list price, but the buyer did get the price down a bit. And, now there are only a few homes left for sale and a couple ranging in the $940,000 price range! The home prices are now starting at ~$864,000…over $100,000 higher than they paid! Yay! And, to top it off, the buyers qualify for BOTH the $8,000 Federal Tax Credit because they were in contract prior to April 30, 2010 AND they qualify for the $10,000 State Tax Credit because they closed escrow after May 1, 2010. So, they qualify for up to $18,000 in tax credits!
I attended their housewarming ceremony yesterday and they both had a VERY big smile on their face, it was just awesome to see and feel the excitement and happiness to be in their new home!
Comments(0)