buying a house - couple questions?

Question

1. Can you order a home inspection BEFORE you make an offer om a home?...
2. If not, if you make an offer and win the bid, can you pull your bid at any time if you find some work needed that was not evident in a standard walkthrough?
3. Can you get out of a winning bid offer?
4. How much UNDER the asking price is considered low-balling?
5. In today's housing market, how much under would you offer for a home? (20,000-30,000?) (I know the markets vary by locations), but in general?

Answer 1

1. Not usually. Doesn't really make sense to pay hundreds if you aren't really serious.

2. You put those conditions in the contract. You make it contingent on the home inspection and put in exactly what makes you walk away. Usually this the basis of a second set of negotiations within the contract.

3. Only by the methods put into said contract. Standards are usually an inspection contingency, a financing contingency and sometimes even a sale of existing house contingency. You can put whatever you want in there and the seller can ask you to remove them all. The offer is all flexible and all negotiable.

4. Depends. It depends on if the house is privately owned and how long it's been on the market. Generally people price relatively fairly and there is usually a local convention or expectation of an offer price vs. a list price, typically on the order of 97-98% if the house is priced fairly. I've sold 4 homes and generally wouldn't even consider an offer serious until it was well into the 90th percentile of asking price. I would say low-balling officially starts at 90% of the asking price and lower.

5. Depends on local custom. Make your realtor earn their money and provide you with good, accurate and RECENT comparable sales. I would only offer 20,000 to 30,000 under offer to someone who is looking for $300,000 or more and had their house on the market for quite some period of time.

Good luck!

Answer 2

1. Can you order a home inspection BEFORE you make an offer om a home?...
-Yes you can, actually before the seller sells their home, a inspector/ apprasier checks out their home quality before they can sell.

2. If not, if you make an offer and win the bid, can you pull your bid at any time if you find some work needed that was not evident in a standard walkthrough?
-Depends, If you put some money down to HOLD THE HOUSE then it'll be hard to get your money back. Other else than that, if you haven't sign at TITLE company, you can.

3. Can you get out of a winning bid offer?
-Yes, if you haven't sign at the title company. You can make up a lie saying that you calculated your money and you cannot pay for the house.

4. How much UNDER the asking price is considered low-balling?
-Depends on the seller, doesn't matter about the asking price. If they want to sell you a house for 10k they can.

5. In today's housing market, how much under would you offer for a home? (20,000-30,000?) (I know the markets vary by locations), but in general?
-Depends on what side of town? It's hard to even give you a general answer. Depends if they are desprite enough. I would try to go as low as possible first maybe drop 50k. I've seen offers for 300k on a 500k home and they got it. doesn't matter, as long as the seller are willing to. Remember the longer the house has been in the market, the lower you can go.

Answer 3

#1 - What I suggest is making an offer "contingent upon an inspection" so that if something isn't to your liking you can back out.

#2 I assume you're talking about foreclosures? No once you bid, you bid on these! It's not a game.
#3 No
#4 All you can do is give it your best shot. If you fail, then you fail. But know this you won't find any bargains
#5 I always caution people on this. If you really want the property - make your best offer! The banks/lenders/counties don't care what your opionion is on the condition of a property, they already know. All they are trying to do is recoup their costs and get rid of the property. So again, make your best offer.

Answer 4

Your questions will be best answered by a buyer’s agent who is familiar with your market. If you choose not to work with a buyer’s agent, you are allowing the seller’s agent to control the entire transaction, and that agent has no interest in serving your needs.

1. Yes you can, but it’s simpler just to make your offer contingent on inspection.
2. Don’t know the legalities in your market.
3. The inspection contingency is a great way to do this.
4. That’s entire up to the judgment of the seller.
5. It’s a matter of percentage more so than dollar amount, and very much depends on your market. I can tell you that I closed on a house today and paid about 20% less than it’s worth.

Answer 5

1. Not sure
2. Yes, after an inspection you can demand they fix anything broken or lower the price to compensate if they refuse the deal is broken
3. Yes under certain conditions
4. Depends on the market you in, your Agent can pull comps to see what the houses around there are going for
5. Again really depends, 30k on a 40k home is alot but nothing to a 2million dollar home! Just make a low offer and if they don't accept they will counter offer, this can keep going back and forth till you both agree!

Answer 6

Because of the complex nature of purchasing a home, it is really in your best interest to have these questions answered by a professional real estate agent.....

It may be possible to have a home inspection before an offer is made, although it would be at your expense.

You can cancel the sale at any time before the closing of escrow, although there may be cost involved

Answer 7

I don't think you can get an inspection before, but your offer can be contingent on the out come of the inspection. A Realtor who works for you and not the seller would be your best bet, or a real estate attorney!

Answer 8

#4. We offered 20% less on a couple different homes,...in our area the market is glutted with homes (it is a true buyers market). We finally got through escrow on a home that listed at $229k and our offer of $193k was countered at $197k.
Our realtor would never give us a straight answer on the question of whether we were low balling,...she just gave us her opinion of whether the home we were thinking of making an offer on was a good investment.