The Housing Market

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

36 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Is the basement finished, or is there a loft? Those are good ways to improve living space and set it apart from the other townhomes. 

Finished basement. It's where I used to keep my games but had to move thousands of them to storage so the viewers wouldn't steal them.

[Tabonga | 2,320]

19 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Finished basement. It's where I used to keep my games but had to move thousands of them to storage so the viewers wouldn't steal them.

(They would likely plunder video games too!)

[avatar! | 1,819]

https://time.com/6149784/rent-u-s/

In the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, median rent rose an astounding 19.3% from December 2020 to December 2021, according to a Realtor.com analysis of properties with two or fewer bedrooms. And nowhere was the jump bigger than in the Miami metro area, where the median rent exploded to $2,850, 49.8% higher than the previous year.

Things have gotten so bad in Boston, which has nearly overtaken San Francisco as the nation’s second-most expensive rental market, that one resident went viral for jokingly putting an igloo on the market for $2,700 a month. “Heat/ hot water not included,” Jonathan Berk tweeted.

Yup, Boston is absolutely bat-shit crazy. Honestly, due to the very limited housing market, I would NOT recommend anyone to move to that disaster zone.

A record 18.2% of U.S home purchases in the third quarter of 2021 were made by businesses or institutions, according to Redfin, as investors targeted Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida — popular destinations for people relocating from pricier cities.

Yup, these huge companies with lots of investment money are purchasing houses and just sitting on them. They're screwing everyone over... except for the politicians of course.

 

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,545]

I'm just assuming my children will be living with me for the next 50 years at this point

[avatar! | 1,819]

2 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I'm just assuming my children will be living with me for the next 50 years at this point

One of my good friends who is in the Boston area has had a six-figure salary (granted a "low" six-figure salary) for years, and he is completely priced out of not just Boston proper but suburbs such as Cambridge (which was always expensive) and Somerville (which used to be totally affordable)! Condos are millions of dollars...

 

[RH | 4,909]

I live about an hour and fifteen outside of uptown Charlotte.  I know it's not as bad as some of those other places, but it's seen "record" increases for numerous decades and is one of the fastest growing cities in the South East.  I live in a rural community of about 5,000 people.  Even way out here, homes consistently go up a 1-2% points month over month.

This is crazy.  It started with deep-pocketed Chinese investors looking to get their money out of China and now businesses are getting into the residential rental property business.  I'm fine with the latter dynamic, so long as they offer these homes.  Regardless, there's probably not much incentive for them to offer property quickly for rent if the value of the "investment" goes up 15-20% year over year.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, though.  At some point this has to collapse.  Granted, there's a lot of money out there but institutions across the globe can't sink all of their money in American property before demand dries up.  No, you might not be able to ever get a decent home again, near a sizable city for less than $200k, but this can't go on forever.

Regardless, we live in a new day and age, and if you have a job that can be mobile, just move waaaaaay out of town.  I already mentioned that I live a good ways outside of uptown Charlotte, but once my kids graduate, I'm still considering selling off my house and possibly games and building a house waaaay out in the mountains of NC or possibly Tennessee.  That is, unless these institutions some how get the idea that buying up huge, 1,000+ acre tracks of land across the US is also a worthwhile investment.  *Sigh*... I guess I could imagine a world where that could happen in the next 20-30 years too.

[Kguillemette | 1,545]

3 hours ago, avatar! said:

One of my good friends who is in the Boston area has had a six-figure salary (granted a "low" six-figure salary) for years, and he is completely priced out of not just Boston proper but suburbs such as Cambridge (which was always expensive) and Somerville (which used to be totally affordable)! Condos are millions of dollars...

 

It's bled into Southern NH. When we went to purchase, we had to go north as Southern NH had priced us out, presumably from Boston commuters. The same property we bought in Belmont, NH would have went for well over 500k in Milford.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

That’s going to be the downfall for middle class homeowners. Big corporate interests buying up massive tracts of housing. I honestly think there needs to be amendments made to the constitution to put heavy restrictions on publicly traded companies. For things like this and other reasons, and Im normally pretty libertarian. 

[avatar! | 1,819]

Home that sold for $805K comes with stranger living in basement

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/home-sold-805k-comes-stranger-155534544.html

The five-bedroom, four bathroom house sold for $805,000 to an unnamed buyer on April 15, public records show. Listing agent Zinta K. Rodgers-Rickert, of RE/MAX Gateway, said the home received five cash offers and closed within less than a week of being listed.

The listing notes that the home needs work, estimating that required repairs and replacements would cost around $25,000. "Home is livable but needs some TLC," it reads.

So, house has unnamed occupant living in the basement (oh, NOT creepy at all), needs tens of thousands in repairs, and still sold for over $800k. Basically, if you don't own a house today, this is you:

[ICrappedMyPants | 302]

I saw this, absolutely nuts!

[Californication | 1,477]

Buddy?

[RH | 4,909]

Seriously, I don't know how this is happening, but I 100% outright own my house and this still scares me a bit.  I check in on my house value about once a month.  Zillow isn't perfect, but if you follow local house sales, there zEstimate is a reasonably reliable figure on price values and you can adjust the odd ones out.

Anyway, my wife and I bought our home back around August 2020.  Since then, our home has almost gone up 50% in value.  As a home owner, it's easy to think "great, if I have to sell at some point, and if trends continue, that's a really nice profit."

But this doesn't make sense to me.  Population isn't finite but it doesn't grow that fast.  We also know that the last 2 years have been nuts, but IMHO, families haven't been making more money.  We could partially blame this on real inflation, and not those meaningless numbers that the government posts, but even. still, prices of homes wouldn't be inflated if people weren't buying these homes and homes are selling.

This is extremely odd to me because I love in a rural town, about one hours drive from Charlotte-city sprawl, and about an hour and a half drive from the center of town.  Charlotte has certainly been booming and there is a bit of sprawl coming this way, but if you look at the area of rural land outside of the Charlotte suburban sprawl, there is still a high percentage area of land that's largely undeveloped.  Specifically, what I'm saying is that though Charlotte's property values are skyrocketing, even waaaay out here, we're seeing spikes and I am surround 30 minutes in any direction by "easy living", slow paced land with farms and old farm houses.

I understand that Chinese wealth has been dumping into foreign real estate for decades, but when the creep starts reaching people "in the boonies" well, it's not just a problem but a really, really big problem.

Maybe this isn't China, but I just can't figure out where all the money is coming from to boost the value of all of these homes when so many people have struggled to afford them.  Eventually, my wife and I would like to retire and move to the mountains of NC.  If this keeps up and doesn't change, in 20 years that won't be possible.  Our hope is to have enough saved that with the sale of our house plus more, we can make that happen, but even if we have a 2.5 million dollar home in 20 years (which feels nuts but with the way things are moving, it doesn't seem impossible either), we can't sell it and afford even a 3.0 million dollar home in the mountains.  That $500,000 is an impossible number.

[Mega Tank | 964]

38 minutes ago, RH said:

Seriously, I don't know how this is happening, but I 100% outright own my house and this still scares me a bit.  I check in on my house value about once a month.  Zillow isn't perfect, but if you follow local house sales, there zEstimate is a reasonably reliable figure on price values and you can adjust the odd ones out.

Anyway, my wife and I bought our home back around August 2020.  Since then, our home has almost gone up 50% in value.  As a home owner, it's easy to think "great, if I have to sell at some point, and if trends continue, that's a really nice profit."

But this doesn't make sense to me.  Population isn't finite but it doesn't grow that fast.  We also know that the last 2 years have been nuts, but IMHO, families haven't been making more money.  We could partially blame this on real inflation, and not those meaningless numbers that the government posts, but even. still, prices of homes wouldn't be inflated if people weren't buying these homes and homes are selling.

This is extremely odd to me because I love in a rural town, about one hours drive from Charlotte-city sprawl, and about an hour and a half drive from the center of town.  Charlotte has certainly been booming and there is a bit of sprawl coming this way, but if you look at the area of rural land outside of the Charlotte suburban sprawl, there is still a high percentage area of land that's largely undeveloped.  Specifically, what I'm saying is that though Charlotte's property values are skyrocketing, even waaaay out here, we're seeing spikes and I am surround 30 minutes in any direction by "easy living", slow paced land with farms and old farm houses.

I understand that Chinese wealth has been dumping into foreign real estate for decades, but when the creep starts reaching people "in the boonies" well, it's not just a problem but a really, really big problem.

Maybe this isn't China, but I just can't figure out where all the money is coming from to boost the value of all of these homes when so many people have struggled to afford them.  Eventually, my wife and I would like to retire and move to the mountains of NC.  If this keeps up and doesn't change, in 20 years that won't be possible.  Our hope is to have enough saved that with the sale of our house plus more, we can make that happen, but even if we have a 2.5 million dollar home in 20 years (which feels nuts but with the way things are moving, it doesn't seem impossible either), we can't sell it and afford even a 3.0 million dollar home in the mountains.  That $500,000 is an impossible number.

I don't look at the numbers as much as others do, but I know exactly what you are talking about. We haven't seen houses in the mid 100's for certain areas up there for quite a while and they keep climbing. Without going into detail, the property we bought in '18 has almost doubled in value. 

[RH | 4,909]

3 minutes ago, Mega Tank said:

I don't look at the numbers as much as others do, but I know exactly what you are talking about. We haven't seen houses in the mid 100's for certain areas up there for quite a while and they keep climbing. Without going into detail, the property we bought in '18 has almost doubled in value. 

Yeah, had we bought this house in 2018 or so, it would be close to that doubled price.  I mean, home appreciation is a good thing.  TO MUCH appreciate can be signs of other major problems, especially when all other signs point to the fact that markets should be down.

If this isn't China, another options is rental REITs* buying up "everything", especially in suburbs and rural communities.  My investment portfolio is diverse and much of it's. down.  However, the few REITs I am holding have actually been doing quite well compared to the rest of the market.  I've not researched if those companies are going big on home purchases, but my only guess is that's what's happening.

*For the unaware because you don't invest in stocks, a REIT is a Real Estate Investment Trust.  There are variations but basically these are investment companies that invest specifically in real estate for rentals.  This can be for homes, apartments, offices, industrial complexes and even simple land to be leased for billboards or anything else that needs tracks of land.

[Skorp | 383]

A house in our neighborhood had 248 offers and sold over $101k asking. Yes, 248 offers. On Saturday and Sunday was open house and around 50-60 cars crowded everywhere. Had 906 watchers too on Zillow. Just 3 days and it was off the market. That is what made me realize this is not a good time at all to buy so I'll just wait for now. Trying to sell the house and move to closer to my business as right now I am renting a "work" apartment so I don't have to drive 45 minutes everyday to work. It's a complicated situation...

[Tabonga | 2,320]

On 4/24/2022 at 3:23 PM, avatar! said:

Home that sold for $805K comes with stranger living in basement

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/home-sold-805k-comes-stranger-155534544.html

The five-bedroom, four bathroom house sold for $805,000 to an unnamed buyer on April 15, public records show. Listing agent Zinta K. Rodgers-Rickert, of RE/MAX Gateway, said the home received five cash offers and closed within less than a week of being listed.

The listing notes that the home needs work, estimating that required repairs and replacements would cost around $25,000. "Home is livable but needs some TLC," it reads.

So, house has unnamed occupant living in the basement (oh, NOT creepy at all), needs tens of thousands in repairs, and still sold for over $800k. Basically, if you don't own a house today, this is you:

I wonder how much just the occupant would set you back if you didn't want the house?

[Californication | 1,477]

43 minutes ago, Tabonga said:

I wonder how much just the occupant would set you back if you didn't want the house?

Just barricade the doors and fumigate the place - problem solved.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Californication

[a3quit4s | 4,102]

So my house went up for sale Wednesday morning, Friday afternoon we had two offers which were both over asking. The offer we accepted; $10k over asking which isn’t crazy but waived home inspection, no right to cancel based on the appraisal, paying all taxes (usually 50/50 split), the buying agent reduced their commission from 3% to 2.25% which I didn’t even know you could do. 
 

I was talking to my wife about how I thought FOMO only applied to video games but clearly not. I told my real estate agent I would never ask someone to waive a home inspection, that just isn’t playing the game fair. I’ve taken extremely good care of this house and have nothing to hide but I have no idea if it’s hiding bigger problems. 

[Alder | 243]

7 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

So my house went up for sale Wednesday morning, Friday afternoon we had two offers which were both over asking. The offer we accepted; $10k over asking which isn’t crazy but waived home inspection, no right to cancel based on the appraisal, paying all taxes (usually 50/50 split), the buying agent reduced their commission from 3% to 2.25% which I didn’t even know you could do. 
 

I was talking to my wife about how I thought FOMO only applied to video games but clearly not. I told my real estate agent I would never ask someone to waive a home inspection, that just isn’t playing the game fair. I’ve taken extremely good care of this house and have nothing to hide but I have no idea if it’s hiding bigger problems. 

Congrats on the sale, it's pretty incredible (and worrying) how fast offers are coming in like that. My wife and I spent a few months house hunting for our first home, in our hometown, back in 2020. We looked at 7 or 8 before getting one, but we put a bid in on one and we lost to someone paying $10k less but in cash. It worked out in the end though. The place we're in now was around the same price but is way better. I agree about inspections, but I guess if they made the offer, it's on them. Our inspection saved us $5k towards a new roof but that's all that came out of it. 

[RH | 4,909]

The insanity of all of this is literally so crazy, if I were in such a market and wanted to sell, I have long decided so that if I had time, I'd waaaaay over price my home to see what would happen.  For instance, if the median listing price for a home in my neighborhood was $500k and people get 5-10% over asking, I'd list my (assumed median) home for $800k.

Just out of curiosity.  There is no "list a home and try to sell it in a few months" any more.  Why not try that old school strategy by, you know, increasing the price well above market value just to see what happens.

Realtors make money by quantity.  So, they are more than willing to do what they do by listing (odd to say this) homes that are under valued so they can move them fast.  The strange thing about this current market though is that prices are skyrocketing so fast, sellers don't feel that getting $500k for a home they bought 5 years ago for $300k is "under priced".  But IMHO, just because you can move a house in less than a week doesn't mean you should move your house in a week.

Regardless of where it's coming from and even it it scares me a little, there's more pent up demand then that.  List a house well above market and float it a month or two.  You might be shocked at what you get.

Edited May 2, 2022 by RH

[avatar! | 1,819]

11 hours ago, Tabonga said:

I wonder how much just the occupant would set you back if you didn't want the house?

I'm guessing what happened is that the house was purchased by some company to flip. Such a company would just force the occupant out. Sad all around.

Why the Road Is Getting Even Rockier for First-Time Home Buyers

Investors and corporations are buying up houses and turning them into rental properties.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-estate-investors-housing-market.html

About 2.5 million households shopping for a first home will be shut out of the market this year, estimates Nadia Evangelou, senior economist with the National Association of Realtors. That amounts to 15 percent of all first-time home buyers. In an already daunting market, investor purchasing is adding to the obstacles.

“The more that investors buy up entire communities and turn them into rental communities — people don’t have a choice anymore,” said Ms. Hilton, who moved from New York to Charlotte in 2007, drawn by the opportunity to buy a house in an affordable market. “They either can’t afford to buy anymore, or there’s nothing to buy.”

This is going to continue to be a major issue that will only get worse, and will only get better once some laws are put in place to protect people such as you and I.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

A realtor knocked on my door today and offered me $65,000 more than I paid in October for my house. He said he has clients that really want to be on this street in particular and the market has gone insane. He's literally going door to door asking people to sell.

[RH | 4,909]

On 5/2/2022 at 7:15 PM, Code Monkey said:

A realtor knocked on my door today and offered me $65,000 more than I paid in October for my house. He said he has clients that really want to be on this street in particular and the market has gone insane. He's literally going door to door asking people to sell.

$150k and you have yourself a deal! Also hire movers for me… of my choosing.

Edited May 4, 2022 by RH

[doner24 | 1,196]

I just listed my house of 11 years ago a week ago and finally took an offer a couple days ago. Pretty sure a large rental company is buying it, 100% cash, super flexible terms for me. 
 

Thankfully we already found another place via private sale prior to this. Moving to my hometown, which is 30 minutes north, and we got much more house, land and a sweet pool/pool house for as much as it would be to get something normal where I’m at now. 

[Tenjikuronin | 1,732]