Offer on a house, sight unseen

[beshannon]

I have never done that and never would.

I can understand why that might be right for some people

[JParm]

Originally Posted by JasoninDenver

I would NEVER waive inspection, especially if I cannot personally eyeball the property. However, due diligence in a good realtor can mitigate the risk of pulling the trigger on the wrong place.

I'm risky, but I'm not that risky - waiving inspections, regardless of the age of the house, is definitely not a wise move, in my opinion.

I thought the CA market was crazy, but reading about some of these other markets across the country makes it seem tame.

[Patton250]

Originally Posted by brandrea

I realize times have changed, and I may be in the minority, but I’d need to see the place I’m going to be living in. Also just as important is the need to get a sense of the neighborhood vibe, the amenities, noise, what does the neighborhood border, etc etc.

I know, I know, it probably doesn’t work this way into todays market, but honestly I don’t see my self buying a home sight unseen or on a real estate agent’s recommendation YMMV.

I am with you man. Here we go again with this stupid housing. Everything is out of control. Everything is a Daytona and 5711. This thing is going to crash so hard it will make 2007 look like a dream. There is no way I would buy a house unseen and not inspected. You have no idea what these people did to the house. I suppose it would be OK if the house was a year old but anything more than a couple of years absolutely not.

[EEpro]

Originally Posted by Patton250

I am with you man. Here we go again with this stupid housing. Everything is out of control. Everything is a Daytona and 5711. This thing is going to crash so hard it will make 2007 look like a dream. There is no way I would buy a house unseen and not inspected. You have no idea what these people did to the house. I suppose it would be OK if the house was a year old but anything more than a couple of years absolutely not.

So true. I was under contract for a 1998 built home in Nevada that had several fireplaces. You'd think in the desert water wouldn't be an issue but the chimney of one had a leak and what little rain water there was had chased the wall through both stories. During a walk through I put my foot through soaking wet drywall in the laundry room on accident while pushing a warped baseboard. Ran like hell and got my deposit back.

[gnuyork]

Originally Posted by Patton250

I am with you man. Here we go again with this stupid housing. Everything is out of control. Everything is a Daytona and 5711. This thing is going to crash so hard it will make 2007 look like a dream. There is no way I would buy a house unseen and not inspected. You have no idea what these people did to the house. I suppose it would be OK if the house was a year old but anything more than a couple of years absolutely not.

You know you can do due diligence and have the house inspected before you are committed to buying the house, right?

[TheVTCGuy]

You should at least check out my room Jess...

[singe89]

My current house I bought sight unseen. I was up in the Bay Area for work and I always wanted to live in San Juan Cap. My wife was out with one of her friends that was house shopping and saw a house that was on the market for 2 days. She called me and I walked out of my meeting and negotiated the deal to go into escrow that day. This was almost 7 years ago now. Spent almost 3 years remodeling top to bottom. Just yesterday I had someone knock on my door offering $300k over base market value (not remodel) all cash unseen. This market is crazy.

[Patton250]

Originally Posted by gnuyork

You know you can do due diligence and have the house inspected before you are committed to buying the house, right?

You might wanna reread his first post. What’s happening today is a race to buy these houses. It’s happening everywhere. Right in my neighborhood some Northeaster came in and offered cash, double the price of what the thing is worth and moved in. I’m not saying he didn’t/couldn’t have it inspected before he actually moved in but the owner got the money first and it was a done deal. It’s happening everywhere in Florida. We are being invaded. So is South Carolina. It’s awful. I personally would not mind making triple what my house is worth but I’m not willing to give up my standard of living and freedoms for it.

[1st amg]

I would be very concerned that you are buying someone's problem that can now exit due to the market conditions of being outrageous. I have heard many stories lately of just that....sell the headache for big cash because most sellers think that buyers have lost their sense of reasonable and doing what they have been taught.. a lot of DD and research went out the window and now its become a war of who wins the bid. Tread carefully Jess.

[IronWatch]

I did last year on a high ticket property moving from northern NJ to Dallas suburb, and that was on what I like to call our “quarter century” house in which we’d raise a family nearly in its entirety and spend our young and middle active adult years. We found the house last April/May smack in the middle of when lockdown was deepest, although we had been looking seriously with a realtor for six or nine months prior, just so happened to be when we found “the one.”

Only reason why we did it (besides being forced to with lockdown of course), is that we visited the area when visiting family two times the summer prior, and dedicated days from each trip to neighborhood hunting. In the end, we picked a very specific neighborhood that we wanted and were willing to wait a reasonable time to see what hit the market that we liked on a handful of streets knowing we would be there for so long. We knew the neighborhood, housing stock, street the house was on when we drove on it, schools already figured out since we knew the neighborhood we wanted, familiarity with general area from annual trips visiting nearby family, etc.

Did multiple Zoom calls with our realtor, got the floor plans with measurements, knew the height of each room to understand space/scale and all inspections (house, structural, pool, etc). With lockdown we were able to take our time negotiating and going back and forth on the decision over a few week period, and also got lucky because the pictures showed awful (total cosmetic gut job that’ll take time in pieces), but turns out all the top-of-the-line upgrades the owners did were mechanical and wouldn’t have appeared on pictures anyhow for competition, so they certainly didn’t make any money on their nine years there. We did inspections for peace of mind of course and the house was 23 years old in moving Texas soil, but basically agreed to the price with “as is” mentality given the price we got, and only would’ve backed out if the house had a very serious issue we wouldn’t want to live with anyhow.

Funny thing is we never asked my father in law who lives 10 minutes away to view it for us, we knew what he values in a property is completely different from ours and that he wasn’t really able to “put himself in our shoes” given our life stage, etc, so he or anyone else from the family never saw it, and the farthest lives 15 minutes away. We wanted it to be only our decision and made it so no one would see it and try to tell us what to do and be at their mercy for an opinion so to speak.

Today the house would’ve gone lickity split even with cosmetic/taste upgrades to be done. We would’ve in post-vaccine world flown out next day as my wife could be flexible there and represent our interests, but would’ve lost on it if we took the time to go back and forth we did last year (which we actually coordinated the sale of our prior property and purchase of this one to take place within three days of each other, worked out but man that was an intense lockdown). We paid our max last year and would be priced out of the market rate if listed this year so timing is everything in real estate as with every other life aspect, even if we don’t know it at the time.

All worked out in the end and the house totally exceeded expectations (we knew it would be cosmetically underwhelming so that was easy to see past), not just because we knew we were “in it” and was a large investment.

Would do again for the right property but wouldn’t without being as intimately familiar with the area, exact neighborhood we landed on as we were in this process. But we were looking for a house we’d spend a generation in.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by Patton250

You might wanna reread his first post. What’s happening today is a race to buy these houses. It’s happening everywhere. Right in my neighborhood some Northeaster came in and offered cash, double the price of what the thing is worth and moved in. I’m not saying he didn’t/couldn’t have it inspected before he actually moved in but the owner got the money first and it was a done deal. It’s happening everywhere in Florida. We are being invaded. So is South Carolina. It’s awful. I personally would not mind making triple what my house is worth but I’m not willing to give up my standard of living and freedoms for it.

In my recent experience buying in CA you put in an offer and it's accepted all contingent on the home inspection. The inspection includes roof, foundation, plbg (what is visible) AC and Heat and pretty much everything. The lender demands these things.

Depending on the deficiencies, the buyer and seller agree on fixes and/or both parties can back out of the deal.

Sight unseen still has a lot of protections although it's not 100%, but neither is buying in person, without the home inspection. There are a lot of hoops to jump through for both buyer and seller.

We bought after looking at the house for 10 minutes. It was 400 miles away and we never saw it again for 45 days. We had to make a quick decision and live with it but the real estate agent looked after all the repairs and inspection deficiencies.

Same with the house we sold. Lots of nitpicky things we had to fix because of the home inspection.

[gnuyork]

Originally Posted by Patton250

You might wanna reread his first post. What’s happening today is a race to buy these houses. It’s happening everywhere. Right in my neighborhood some Northeaster came in and offered cash, double the price of what the thing is worth and moved in. I’m not saying he didn’t/couldn’t have it inspected before he actually moved in but the owner got the money first and it was a done deal. It’s happening everywhere in Florida. We are being invaded. So is South Carolina. It’s awful. I personally would not mind making triple what my house is worth but I’m not willing to give up my standard of living and freedoms for it.

Ummmm. I did ... He said, and I quote "How many of you have put an offer on a house without having physically set foot inside?"

[BroncoOne]

Originally Posted by jpeezy14@hotmail.com

Not in our case - 3 year orders doesn't really allow for flexibility like that. In this case, my wife could have the opportunity to retire at 20 years and we'd have the choice of staying put or moving down to SD, as mentioned.

I know it's different for everyone, but we've "lost" enough money renting in the past and each time we've bought a home, we've come out on top...by far.

I'd also rather not put 5-6k towards rent that I won't get back.

Rent your home in SD to fund renting in Monterey for that few years that you want to be there. Then your move back to SD is all set and your financial position remains unchanged.

Also, if you rented a place that turns out not to be the right fit for you, you can move fairly easily.

[AzPaul]

Not a situation I'd be comfortable with.

[JParm]

Originally Posted by TheVTCGuy

You should at least check out my room Jess...

I'm afraid you'd charge me 10x, Paul...and that's the friend's rate.

Originally Posted by BroncoOne

Rent your home in SD to fund renting in Monterey for that few years that you want to be there. Then your move back to SD is all set and your financial position remains unchanged.

Also, if you rented a place that turns out not to be the right fit for you, you can move fairly easily.

We sold our SD home for a very nice profit in 2015. We do have a home that we own outright in Palm Beach that is a rental property, and the house we currently live in will become a 2nd rental property for us (we refinanced last year and the rent over our mortgage is beyond what I would expect out of a rental).

Like I said, home-buying for us has been fruitful, thus our desire to never rent again.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by AzPaul

Not a situation I'd be comfortable with.

It's tricky. In our situation we had to move. We took one weekend to drive down 400 miles to look at areas that worked for the commute to my wife's new office. Then we looked at homes in those areas on Zillow. We picked out 3 or 4 and arranged with a real estate agent to look at them.

On the drive down again, (6 hours) all the homes already had offers or were essentially off the market. So when we got here we had to pick out some new candidates. We started looking at them 11AM and by 2 PM we put offers on 2 houses on the same street, $50,000 apart and we offered full price and it was accepted the next day over 3 other offers. The other house went into a bidding war and went $150,000 over asking a week later.

So we lucked out. But it was nerve wracking.

The house we sold went in 2 days with 5 offers, $70,000 over asking.

Because people lose out on bidding wars with multiple other offers, they also become desperate and will accept almost any house, even one needing repairs just to get a place and they'll take a place sight unseen as well. Crazy times.

[RichM]

I’ve never done it, but then again I never bought more than a state or two away from where I lived.

It’s a big investment and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with it. Whatever you decide, I hope it works out for you.

[Brew]

Most of my career was with a company that was know for shuffling employees around the globe. I never purchased sight unseen, though. I usually rented a year, then bought. Likely not as appealing to a guy with a young family, given 2 successive moves.

[Rbdport]

Husband and I have bought/sold 10 properties in our 40 years together. 5 of them bought sight unseen, including our current residence in FL. Never been disappointed. The key is a good realtor and a clear discussion with that realtor on wants/needs/expectations.

[ludetuner]

I have done it on a couple of investment properties. Both times my real estate agent checked out the places and took videos and pics.

[Mifune]

if it's good enough for BlackRock...

------------------------------------------------

BlackRock under fire amid reports private-equity firms are ‘snapping up single-family houses’

With home prices taking off, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is taking heat for outbidding typical buyers of single-family homes, reportedly increasing the demand and driving prices upward.

Back in April, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about “yield-chasing” private-equity firms with billions “snapping up single-family houses to rent out or flip.”

Vox summed it up well when the outlet observed that “investors have turned to the real estate market because it has become a very profitable place to put your money.”