Asking price for a house is 275K; 2007 market value is 239K; What should my

[THREE]

first offer be? the house is located in the SW miami area

[ibu guru]

What are the comps (comparables)? Your real estate agent should fill you in on that info (the seller's agent won't). If you don't have a buyer's broker, you have to a little research. Does your local paper (not big-city daily like Miami Herald) list recent sales? How does the asking price compare with asking prices of all the other places in the neighborhood (you should have seen a bunch of them). Miami property is not jumping. What makes this neighborhood worth more than 10% increase in less than a year? Then offer below the comps. If there are no other buyers in the wings, things aren't moving, then lowball your offer, say $225K. They can always counter-offer, so test the waters.

[David M]

go wild and offer 229000 and if they want to sell bad enough they will because houses are still dropping. This is also true if the people selling it want to retire.

[Real Estate Guy]

TO EVERYONE THAT KEEPS ASKING THIS QUESTION:

Before you make any offer, you MUST KNOW THE VALUE OF THE PROPERTY!!!!

Your realtor should provide you with what has sold in the past 6 months and compare these with the house you are looking at.

Maybe the price of the house you are looking at is actually below market. Just because a house is for sale, DOES NOT make it over priced. We only do listings with sellers that will try to sell their homes at market value or a few percents lower. We will not take a over priced listing. It costs us money and the house will sit. To all those sellers that say that they will over price the house, BUT look at offers - you are fooling yourselves.

There is a LOT of misinformation out there. There are 3 types of buyers.

1. The ones that can't afford their house and need to sell. However, these people usually don't have any equity and even if they wanted to sell low, they would have to make up the difference on their mortgage at settlement. These usually go back to the bank.

2. The ones that WANT to sell, but have no equity. Same story as above, but they will not loss the house and will wait to sell when the market gets better.

3. The ones that want to sell and have equity. This is the only group that you can actually get a "deal" with. However, equity in their home is their greatest asset and most of these people will wait the market out.

[imami800]

Of course it lets you list and find houses on the MLS by yourself and saves alot in commissions. Also it gives you much better access to the info you will need to find and price homes, but there are costs to having a license. You can, of course, sell the homes without a realtor but its alot easier if you are a realtor. Also, the class you take to become a realtor teaches you alot and is itself helpful, so I'd go ahead and sign up for the realtor class and take that to start the whole thing.




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