‘Buyers Aggressively Trying To Push Prices Down’: LV
The Las Vegas Sun reports on the housing bubble. “Home sellers better prepare for whiplash. Buyers are in the driver’s seat these days, steering for bargains that haven’t been offered in years. A record number of resale houses, 18,467 in April, are on the market, along with another 4,000 new homes. Additionally, another 6,000 condominiums are, or will soon be, for sale after being converted from apartments.”
“Some incentive packages have been valued by builders at up to $100,000. Builders are offering higher commissions to real estate agents, up to 6 percent in some cases. With contract cancellations reaching 38 percent in some new subdivisions, builders are cutting staff and prices on new homes by tens of thousands of dollars.”
“With about 30 houses entering the market daily, one broker expects the number of resale houses for sale to reach 20,000 this year, a first for the valley. The increase in the housing inventory is largely attributable to real estate investors and speculators who are now trying to cash in before the market cools too much, said Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research Inc.”
“With the market softening, buyers are aggressively trying to push prices down even further, said real estate agent Shelley Brown. ‘Some buyers are making offers of $20,000 to $30,000 less on homes that are priced right, and they can’t do that; sellers won’t sell,’ she said. ‘Buyers with unrealistic expectations are not getting houses.’”
“The market fluctuations are bittersweet for homeowners like Mason and Bonnie Hall, who purchased their 3,200-square-foot home in the northwest Las Vegas Valley five years ago for $248,000. They listed it for $699,000, but accepted $660,000 in April after the house had been for sale for almost three months. The Halls bought a new home in Enterprise, Utah, that cost about $200,000.”
“Price drops are occurring already in the Las Vegas new-home market. Some homebuilders are reducing prices of their high-end homes by as much as $100,000, according to Larry Murphy, who monitors real estate trends. KB Home recently reduced prices up to $30,000 at 16 of its 38 subdivisions.”
“‘We had to make sure that we were priced correctly to the market,’ said KB Home division President Don DelGiorno. ‘The amount of competition out there, especially in the resales, is in reaction to that.’”
Thanks to the readers who sent in this link.
‘With contract cancellations reaching 38 percent in some new subdivisions, builders are cutting staff and prices’
uh-ohh
We should all pitch in and take out a full page National ad and put the final stake in this housing bubble and be done with it!
What would it say?
WE DON’T WANT YOU SILLY “INCENTIVES” — LOWER YOUR PRICE!
““The market fluctuations are bittersweet for homeowners like Mason and Bonnie Hall, who purchased their 3,200-square-foot home in the northwest Las Vegas Valley five years ago for $248,000. They listed it for $699,000, but accepted $660,000 in April after the house had been for sale for almost three months.”
GMAFB! where is the “bitter” part in this sweet appreciation???
Hey, cry me a river, would ya?
Probably HELOCed to the hilt and every dime of the “equity” spent but still, that’s 400K.
For you tax experts out there, these people theoretically made a 400K profit and buy a house for cash for 200K. Do they owe income taxes on the other 200K?
nope all tax free gains up to 500k for a couple
that’s one of the things that have fueled the market runup since about 1997 or so. in previous years if you bought down in price you had to pay tax. i got taxed about about $25,000 in 1990 when i sold a house in mission viejo, ca and bought a less expensive one.
oh well.
i know i made bank cha ching
I agree ….Somehow I can’t feel sorry for this couple that only made $412k in 5 years instead of $451K . Oh poor people they had to go down $39K .
Some people have no idea how lucky they are . Want to bet the profit would of been 1/2 of that 2 years from now .
HOPEFULLY they just bought an overpriced $1M+ house and will be swallowed up into the black hole.
From TFA: They bought a $200,000 house in Utah. But if it’s any consolation, I’m sure it’s overpriced.
Clark Country recorder also shows 2 bedroom townhouse purchase 12/04 for $183,000. Sound like they took a HELCO to buy the investment property becuase everybody makes money investing in real estate
That house will revert back to it’s original $248k in 24 months, when interest rates go back to 9.5/10%.
The idiots who bought it will be cryin’ buckets when the bank comes after them for a $400k deficiency judgement.
“they can’t do that, sellers won’t sell”. No problem, we’ll wait or find someone who will accept our offer.
Hilarious!……I love it. Oh, I’m sorry, is there some rule in place against low-balling your so called “fair price”. Give me a friggin break! Get over it, realtors! You’d better start accepting these offers ’cause there going to look pretty damn good in 3 months time…. “they can’t do that”…only a realtor would say something that ridiculous.
Yeah this is really bizarre, this agent is upset that a offer is being made that she feels in unreasonable. But how come it was not unreasonable for prices to double in 2 years. Make no mistake, prices will come back down to be in line with underlying fundamentals,ie median salaries, rental prices inflation etc.
You know, I was just thinking. I think that a blog should be set up so that it serves the purpose of organizing the entire group of buyers in the US so that we can hold back for several weeks and watch the prices drop to relatively nothing before buying houses, and to time the purchases among this group so that the prices can’t rise back up much in the face of demand. In other words, “Okay, you guys over there or under the ranges of names from C to F, you can go out and buy houses in these areas.”
I hope this is legal. Somebody needs to break these bastard and give them a taste of my reality, which is, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you don’t get ahead anyway.
“Stick it to the Man”
Stephanie
http://www.boycotthousing.com/
It’s primarily Bay area but I don’t see anything wrong with all of us signing on to take it national.
A lot of people are making that choice independently. I was on the subway the other day and overheard a guy saying to his friend, “Well, now that prices are starting to come down, I’m going to wait two years and see where it ultimately lands.” It seems like most people who can wait it out are doing so.
Sellers have been “high balling”, the opposite of “low balling” for years.
I describe high balling as a seller who puts a rediculously high price on a house they are selling to see what happens.
And I believe there has been some level of fraud happenning on the sellers end in terms of “bidding wars” and legitimate bids.
My understanding is that the seller and the agent never reveal the identity of the ghost bidders that they claim had out bid what might have been the sole bidder. And even if they cover their but, buy having a real person, such as a relative or friend bid, these straw bidder have no intention of really buying the house, they are, or were, there to just cause the one or more buyers who made an offer to offer more.
However, I emphasise that I have received no report of sellers revealing the name or identies of these ghost bidders.
And I HAVE receive many reports complaining and in some cases proving fraud of sellers, and especially agents, manipulating buyers by claiming higher offers of non existent buyers.
This practice has been identified and prosecuted as a crime with in ebay, whom also have a policy against such practice.
However, I know no laws which protect buys from such practices in real estate purchases.
It is possible that realtors that practic such activity are violating laws that govern how “auctions” take place. And it is my belief that in fact a realtor that talks about “bids” is in fact conducting an auction.
And if my hunch is correct that this kind of fraud did take place, especially during the height of the real estate “bidding wars” days of 2004 and 2005, then prices were pushed further over what they are valued at.
And because of the real estate appraisal system which heavily incorporates comparable sale prices, and that these sale prices may have been a product of fraud, the appraisals based on or corrupted sale prices to snow ball sale prices up, while there is plenty of “snow” (funny money) to make the snow ball bigger.
And as the snow (Funny money - low interest, cheap money) diminishes, the ball will eventually melt away when the light of day hits it (blogs, news reports, prosecutions for fraud, etc.)
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
My understanding is that as a realtor you cannot give any information what-so-ever about another bid .Also you cannot lie about bids that do not exist . On a house I was going to buy one time , I was told another offer was coming in . I said ,”Let the other guy have it ,I’m not going to go to war with him.”
You would most likely have a common law fraud claim if the realtor and buyer misrepresented the competing bids or lack thereof and you relied upon that misrepresentation and paid a higher price.
Please clarify “common law fraud claim”.
Also, with these cases, not only does it harm the purchaser, as it would if someone bought something on eBay using straw or ghost bidders, it hurts others who buy in the area who use that fraudulently induced purchase price as a comparable when creating an appraisal.
And besides that there is an issue of proving the fraud. If the realtor merely verbally claimed there was a higher bid, and put nothing in writing, and that this bids are not in writing and documentation is kept by the realtor, and if the realtor was working alone, then it is further more difficult to prove it. And even if the realtor and the seller conspired together to have mock bidder, which I don’t see as likely, since realtors tend to only share info with the seller as they see fit, therefore, if the realtor is committing fraud and the seller is being made happy being told their house is sold for a couple hundred thousand dollars beyone their original asking price, the seller would probably be unlikely to ask any questions about fraudulent activity, especially in a case like this where it is unclear what is actually fraud, and the seller may not want to get involved and just to take their money.
And as I have talked to several realtors, I have come across several which I believe would participate in this kind of activity.
However, now the realtors have created a problem which will sink the real estate industry. We are already seeing the signs of the sinking of the industry, such as daily reports of “softening” of the real estate, massive cuts in jobs in real estate sales, mortgage brokering, construction jobs, and the indirect economic impact in diminishing consumption, which creates diminshed production. And those two factors cause further job loses. Additionally, the sky rocketing real estate caused massive unaffordability in cost of housing. And that and the other things cause massive amounts of degradation in quality of life among the majority of people, and especially hitting middle income and lower income persons the hardest.
I have received reports that numbers of people queing up the food distribution locations for free food in Los Angeles have escalated in the last 2-3 by 200-300% or more.
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
You stated “Also you cannot lie about bids that do not exist”.
My first comment is please clarify “you cannot”.
Also, I respond to this with a philisophical story, “if a tree fall, and no one hears or sees it, did the tree fall?”
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
think about it for the moment, why did the the buyer bought the house in the first place if it is already ridiculously overpriced?
What is the anwer to your question?
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
Los Angeles Friend in Deed …I was just saying realtors can’t say to a buyer other bids are coming in ,when they are not , to induce that buyer to make a higher offer . This is a form of fraud IMHO. Sorry I wasn’t clear
“they can’t do that..”
Reminds me of “Field of Dreams”
As Costner breaks into James Earl Jones’ (JEJ) apartment only to realize that JEJ has a crow-bar
Costner “hey what are you going to do with that?”
JEJ “I’m going to beat you with it until you leave”
Costner “wait, you can’t do that!”
JEJ “Oh, there are rules here? There are no rules here”
Hey Kevin (sellers) welcome to the NEW world of real estate
Enjoy.
Your comment expressed the idea of what I was thinking. I don’t recall having seen the scene you spoke of, but the idea expressed is clear. Saying the word “can’t” is really unclear. It leaves open, in what way the person “can’t”. If it is that they can’t because there is a law the prevents the person from doing it. Then the person merely violates the law, which happens. I have read hundreds of reports of real estate brokers being involved in real estate crimes.
And with this “bidding wars” issue, in the way the real estate brokers are carrying out, is hard to prove that a fraud or scam took place. I think that if law makers wrote laws that clear address this issue and put safe guards in law that protect the bublic from these kind of scams, we may just see a continuing erosion in credibility of the real estate sales industry. And the blow out of the behemouth real estate bubble and the mortgage lender financial institution collapse will be evidence of this.
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
If sellers won’t sell, buyers won’t buy, therefore sellers hanging on a thread from default, will sell.
Yeah, one of these days these fools are going to figure out they are not in charge of whether a sale is made or not.
Give’em another six-months-worth of unattended open houses — that should do the trick.
stucco let’s give ‘em 3 months of summertime dog days. tempers will be getting a little short by then
Right, and predictably, the builders will undercut them all the way down.
Yes they will….And only the most serious and equity laden sellers will be able to compete…..
“Right, and predictably, the builders will undercut them all the way down.”
________________________________________
To a point. With the commodity boom the price of energy and materials will likely put a floor under just how low the builders can go profitably. Unless we get commodity deflation then all bets are off. I suspect the builders are going to lead prices down for a while. Then the paniced resale sellers will further lower the prices below what the builders can profit from. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
“…will likely put a floor under just how low the builders can go profitably.”
But who says they must make a profit at all? It might be in their interest to flog properties at cost just to keep their valued subcontractors employed. In the end, builders, just like re-sellers, will have to take what the market will bring them. If that happens to be a loss, then they’ll have a bad day. But it’s nowhere close to impossible. The phrase “the seller had to bring money to the table” can apply to any seller.
Correction: It makes sense to BUILD them at cost. It makes sense to sell them below cost if the option is paying interest on a construction loan while it sits empty.
And which major builder files Chapter 11 first. Frontline did a show on how Corporate BK is now standard operating proceedure. They stop paying their bank loans, settle for any price they can get for their existing houses, and pay the banks back at 75 cents on the dollar with a promise to never do it again.
“…the price of energy and materials will likely put a floor under just how low the builders can go profitably.”
If they don’t give by dropping prices, even if they have to take a loss, then they run the risk of killing thier business altogether by going bankrupt. and then, like any other seller with massive debt will no longer be calling the shots on when and for how much thier real estate is sold for. It will be sold the creditor, and probably in auction to the highest bidder. Then again the buyer is calling the shots.
Los Angeles Friends In Deed
“The market fluctuations are bittersweet for homeowners like Mason and Bonnie Hall, who purchased their 3,200-square-foot home in the northwest Las Vegas Valley five years ago for $248,000. They listed it for $699,000, but accepted $660,000 in April after the house had been for sale for almost three months.”
———————————————————-
The new buyers just paid $660K for a house that will revert to it’s real value of $248K in five years or so. They just signed their life away for a future of indentured service to the bank. They will be under water by $400K, probably with an ARM or neg-am.
More like $200K in two years. The $248 was in a healthy, normal market, the likes of which LV will not see for years to come.
Hey, to keep with historical norms where RE prices did slightly better than inflation(inflation + 1% maybe), a fair prices for this house would be 270K, how did it get to be 660K?
With all the noise out there about housing bubble and the posibility of a reccession, I have to tip my hat off to the buyers who paid 660K for this nice beautiful 3200 sq.ft home. I personnally don’t have the gut to do that. I want to sleep good at night, so I will NOT even look at the so-call bargains out there. Let the sellers and agents dance to their own drums. I will buy when the dust settles, after the big crash which will begin soon. Again, congratulations to the buyers of that nice wonderful home.
Sometimes, less cojones are better than more…
LOL , thats what I was thinking .
Less balls is better when the balls exceed the brain.
said real estate agent Shelley Brown. ‘Some buyers are making offers of $20,000 to $30,000 less on homes that are priced right, and they can’t do that; sellers won’t sell,’ she said. ‘Buyers with unrealistic expectations are not getting houses.’”
Well thanks for that gem Shelley. Asking that an owner only get $400k vs $430k profit on a sale of house worth at max ~ $300k is really unrealistic. Puleeze!! The more of these quotes I read, the more I hate the thought of ever paying 6% to one of these airheads.
It’s priced right if it sells in a reasonable time. Sells in 9months=priced too high. Sells in 3 days=priced too low. And don’t forget carrying costs people.
As a buyer, I always go into an offer situation with the mind set that there will be plenty of other homes available if this one doesn’t go through. Lately I’m not even willing to make an offer for anything that is less than 20% off the asking price, even then I think I am being generous. I know that the offer will be rejected so I don’t even waste my time. Just give it time.
The realtor’s comments make even less sense in light of the fact that the same article talks about the one house being marked down from 699K to 660K to sale, as well as all the new home markdowns. It’s obvious that 30-40K is the “current” minimum “low-ball” offer that you should give if you must buy a house right now. Even though I agree with most folks on this blog and will wait until summer 07 or into 08 to buy, we need these current buyers to chip away at the prices NOW. The 100K + lowering of current prices we expect won’t happen in one big drop, we need all of the 20-30K steps on the way down to get to what WE feel is a reasonable price.
I had that thought. There is no way I could sign up to give a 400K windfall to some jackasss. I’d rent the rest of my life before I’d do that.
Especially when they only held the place 5 years to get the 400Kplus windfall.
I’ve said the same thing here a dozen times now. I refuse to mortgage my future to fund some Clownifornian’s house retirement plan. No way in hell.
Funny how this real estate business has gone. Classic Bushinomics. The rich (and older) have gotten richer and the rest have been hosed. I know the latest flippers will crash and burn, but the earlier ones will be able to pay cash for homes in areas, still screwing the rest of us. I wonder how long it will take for normal people to experience reasonable housing in the bubbled areas?
You are probably partially correct. I suspect a good number of those people are “move ups” and merely rolled their gains into even more ridiculously overpriced houses.
Why next we’ll be taking cash directly from younger workers and giving it directly to retirees.
you mean rich retirees?
Mr_Fester, I don’t really understand your comments. Classic “Bushonomics”? Especially about the Rich & “Older” part. I’ve studied this housing bubble closely and what really made things crazy were all the idiot 20-30 somethings looking for easy money through speculation, flipping, etc. Those with money to start with just went along with the ride and probably did make more, but it was all fueled by the get rich quick, anything goes, I want it now, need my Beemer, younger crowd of people who have exhibited ZERO common sense over the last 6 years. Jeez, I’m “only” 46…but feel like an old man.
I have to agree with Out of San Diego,
What does this have to do with Bushonomics? Supporting an argument with nonsense does not make it true, even if the outcome is the same. Please, people, stay on topic here. This is not a political forum. If you want one of those, there are thousands outside of the economic discussion of lax lending standards.
John Doe
Well said!!
Praise the lord and pass the amunition!!
For years now one of the first questions I ask any of my friends who are looking at a house is: “How much did the current owner pay for it?”
It’s the first thing I would want to know but I’m always surprised how little others are interested in it.
My theory is that when there is a deal with $ signs at the end of it people don’t want to be confronted with facts that suggest otherwise.
It never matters how much the previous owner paid. It ALWAYS matters how much you pay. I would only be interested in knowing how much they paid so I could guess how much they owe, and aim a lowball accordingly (not now of course).
Well Brad, I guess we’ve made the same predications.
The buyers better hope we don’t know what we’ve talking about-LMAO!!!!!!!
I detect the attitude that Mr. Fester is imagining things by mentioning BushCo’s failed policies.
Mr. Fester couldn’t be more correct.
Buyers do not push home prices down, sellers do. When there are so many homes on the market that it takes over six months on average to sell at last period’s price level, those sellers who need to sell more quickly and can afford to do so “screw up the comps” by underpricing. Any seller could sell in a week or so if they were willing to underprice, but most will not, because they still live under the doomed illusion that the recent transient home equity gains are permanent.
Some may also be astute enough to imagine that Fed Chairman Bernanke has a motive to keep housing prices from tanking, as he would prefer to avoid the looming foreclosure crisis. However, the risk of a currency crisis from conducting too loose a monetary policy ties Bernanke’s hands; I am fairly sure he would prefer to have a housing-slowdown-led recession to a currency devaluation, which would likely lead the US into a depression highlighted by an inability to afford cheap goods any longer from the enabler-in-chief for the US consumption binge (China).
so true
We may get both…
dollar has already devaluated from 1.20 tp 0.8 euro in 4 yrs…that is massive. (same against most big currencies except the RMB/YEN etc)
I think dollar play (downside) is not much from here. Other assets will largely deflate hereon.
You, my friend, are the dumbass of the century.
UH OH….
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2189601,00.html
nah.
they have an automatic system shut down this time.
If you want to sell a multi-million $$ migraine, give incentives to the realtors, not buyers:
” With the cooling of the local housing market, Bill and Adel Forsythe are hoping to snag a buyer for their 10,000-square-foot home in Summerlin by throwing a car into the mix.
The couple said that in addition to paying a 3 percent real estate commission, they will give a BMW Z4 convertible to whoever delivers them a buyer.
The Forsythes are asking $5.9 million for their home. They listed it in June 2004 for $6.9 million.
Delinda Crampton, the real estate agent listing the house, said the high-end market is challenged by a small pool of qualified buyers. Offering a car should help drum up interest, she said.
The recipient will have to buy his own gas.
“With the commission the agent will be getting, they’ll be more than able to afford the gas for that car,” Crampton said.
- Jennifer Shubinski “
Given that the base commission is around $180k, would a $40k car on top of it provide the incentive that would make the difference between the house selling or not? Maybe, but I somehow doubt it. I’m thinking any realtor that thinks they can find a buyer will be quite motivated by the $180k alone. Maybe a realtor with a would be buyer trying to decide between this house and another $6mil house will try to steer the buyers towards the Z4 house… but in this climate how many realtors have the luxury of having such a buyer on board?
The scenario I’d rather see is for a buyer to offer full commission and a Z4 to a realtor who gets a seller to cut $150k or so off the sale price of a $400k house.
Interesting premise. I assume such a tactic is illegal? I mean, is it illegal for me to go to a realtor selling a house and offerring them, say, 1 point for them if they can convince the seller to come down 3 points off their asking price?
A Z4? WTF. I want all their cars and the boat.
‘Las Vegas home prices take a tumble. Will metro Phoenix’s home values follow? Sin City led the nation in home price run-ups fueled by speculators in 2004, the year before the Valley did. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reports the median price of a home there fell almost $5,000 between April and March. The median price of a Las Vegas house was $310,000 in April, only 5 percent higher than it was in April 2005.’
‘The Valley’s median existing home price teetered at $264,900 in April, slightly off the high of $265,000 in February. Less than five years ago, homes in Las Vegas were less pricey than they were in metro Phoenix.’
Existing home prices fell by only $100? That isn’t very much, really.
I suspect the reason the overall median fell by $5000 has to do with the type of homes they are building and selling now. Those 3-story homes pressed together like cereal-boxs on a shelf tend to sell for less than the master-planned gated communities they were building last year. Also, the condo conversions are hitting a peak right now, which puts downward pressure on the median.
The data is difficult to interpret, but to say prices are “tumbling” is not exactly accurate, IMO. You can pay less and buy less, and many people are doing just that.
Can someone please explain to me why a large number of people would want to move to/LIVE in Las Vegas? Personally, I think it’s a classic - “Nice place to visit - but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
I have been spending alot of time in LV lately as I am being transfered there in the next 3-6 months(from SoCal). Here are my observations:
1)Median incomes are not high enough to justify these prices.
2)The increases seem to be due to speculators who cashed out in Cali.
3)Besides hardcore gamblers or people who must be in LV for business(me), I dont know why people would want to live there,
4)There does not seem to be a”nice” part of town, you have luxury homes or condos, next to casinos or highways.
5)Rents here are very cheap,and vacancies high so unless you bought a property several years ago, I dont think you can be a cash flow positive landlord, and thats if you can rent it as there are many rentals that are vacant on the market.
All in all, it is really hard to figure the LV market out. Other than pure land rush speculation from other areas, and you know how those usually end up.
Las Vegas is a beautiful place to live! I’m having a wonderful time raising my kids and making money here. There are plenty of nice neighborhoods.
Life is what you make of it. If you are determined to hate a place, then you will find no joy in it. But most people I know are comfortable and happy here.
County assessor monthly what is happening in Vegas. It didn’t become the fastest growing city in America 2 years ago because nobody liked it. I know real estate is heading for a tumble in Vegas, but if it crashes there with employment way up, unemployment way down and apartment vacancy one of the lowest in USA…then there isn’t a mjor city that is not going to take a hit
New Residents (Drivers License Count)April-06 6,784… March-06..6,305… April 2005 6,600 plus +2.8%
Total Employment April-06 914,100… March-06 905, 200 April 2005…866,600 plus+ 5.5%
Unemployment Rate April-06 4.0% ….March-06 3.7%…April 2005 4.1% down -2.4%
Apartment Rental Rate 1st Qtr 2006 $824 $813 $779 1.3% plus+ 5.7%
Apartment Vacancy Rate 1st Qtr 2006 4.6% 4.9% 5.1% down -10.3%
don’t forget, however, that vegas is hit worse than other cities when the economy tanks because luxuries (and throwing money away) are the first to be cut.
You don’t want to live there. Forget what any of these pro-LV pundits say. Being born and raised there I can tell you it once was a nice place. Now it is giant sewer.
If you want your kids to grow up to be hustlers and strippers then Las Vegas is for you.
Vegas is not for everyone but Vegas is more than the Strip.
Reasons people like living in Vegas.
1. No state income tax
2. Mild great weather 8-9 months of year
3. Big city amenities, but once you get off the Strip, can have nice surburban lifestyle
4. Built in entertainment
5. Great shopping
6. Great dining options- from finest dining to great cheap ethnic eats
7. Central airport close to home - 20 minutes from almost anywhere
8. No humidity, no mosquitos
Simmsays..
http://www.americaninventorspot.com
don’t forget
9. Strippers
10. Hookers
Where do I sign?
No need. They take credit cards and unlike housing prices they do… ooops family blog.
LOL
10. Nevada Test Site 60 minutes from the airport.
11. Yucca Mountain, future raioactive waste dump 90 minutes from the airport
The above Heavily radioactive sites were located in the remote desert because no one lived there.
“Buyers with unrealistic expectations are not getting houses.”
I prefer to think of it as sellers with unrealistic expectations not getting sales.
You don’t know if they were low balling until somebody actually buys it. Go ahead, keep insulting them, you’re not out anything and eventually somebody might say yes.
Ok, say I’m a potential 1st time buyer with ~2K a month to spend on housing. I have these choices in the same town. Buy #1 or Rent #2. The first has asbestos walls to boot. (I know, in CA the first would cost a million bucks . . .)
http://www.homesdatabase.com/FQ6017493
http://www.homesdatabase.com/FQ6047128
i like the “Rambler”. Not.
Rental listing says - never lived in. Aka someones bubble boat anchor.
Wow!
Great comparison Arwen U.
Las Vegas is a crime invested dump….a person described it as “a trailer park surrounded by neon”. No accident all decent communities are gated. To keep the meth heads out.
“Welcome to the Jungle”
Well said. Except those meth heads are strippers and valet drivers that make more than you and me and can afford a house in those gated communities. There are no decent communities.
I bit offtopic, as I live in SF Bay Area. A coworker bought last summer with I/O ARM in South San Jose. I wonder what does he feel, because I think that’s the worst time to buy. He sold his kick-ass Infinity G35 and now drives a beat-up junk to bring money to the closing. Fool, if he waited he at least could’ve kept the car.
In any case, bad decision. Probably his wife forced him.
I would have kept the car instead. You can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.
Comment by simmssays
2006-05-21 12:48:22
Vegas is not for everyone but Vegas is more than the Strip.
Reasons people like living in Vegas.
1. No state income tax
2. Mild great weather 8-9 months of year
3. Big city amenities, but once you get off the Strip, can have nice surburban lifestyle
4. Built in entertainment
5. Great shopping
6. Great dining options- from finest dining to great cheap ethnic eats
7. Central airport close to home - 20 minutes from almost anywhere
8. No humidity, no mosquitos
Yup to all of these. Add in “friendly business atmosphere” (which probably also goes under low taxes) and Vegas is a great place to live if you are a business owner.
Me and my husband saved, at the minimum, 40% off our business’s tax bill the first year we moved to Nevada (we relocated from California). As much as I like to complain about Vegas, business wise compared to high tax states like California, it can’t be beat.
Cost of living out here used to be extremely low until speculators came out here, bought up all the houses, and screwed everything up. But I expect this situation will reverse itself once this real estate bubble completely pops.
Also, if you’re a single guy, strippers and hookers out here are real cheap…and will be moreso in the future, when all the real estate agents are out of work, and go back to their former prostitution jobs (I swear, half the real estate agents i’ve met out here are former hookers and strippers).
spacepest …Interesting ..Who is buying all those high priced luxury condos, if you know ?
*looks at Housing Wizard confused*
Flippers! Who else would want them?
To these add: no inheritance tax (for the retiring boomers), no capital gains tax, no inventory tax, more reasonable worker’s comp fees (part of why CA businesses are moving to NV), no franchise tax…altho I prefer the Reno area to LV, as it has all of these benefits plus Lake Tahoe and a mild 4-season climate, beautiful mountains, a growing arts community, and you can actually live there and find jobs unrelated to the gaming industry.
Yea , but remember the real estate taxes are high . What rate are they now ?
They are? I paid >700 a year for my Carson City home.
What’s the tax rate on a new purchase in Vegas .
This wasn’t that easy to look up. According to the Review Journal,
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Jul-09-Sat-2005/business/2429996.html
“The 0.5 percent real property transfer tax equates to $1,500 on a $300,000 home.”
That’s what the buyer pays when he buys the home, although you can negotiate for the seller to pay it.
And according to this guy:
http://www.bartaustin.com/lasvegas/property-taxes-index.html
The annual property tax would be $2,871.05 on a $250,000 home in Las Vegas. That’s about $239/month.
Also, no estate tax. Property tax is 1% of sales price, capped at 3%/year increase therafter. Not so different from Proposition 13 in CA.
You forgot:
9. Nevada Test Site 60 minutes from the airport.
10. Yucca Mountain, future raioactive waste dump 90 minutes from the airport
Quick poll:
After all the new attention given to the slowing real estate market by the media, plunging HB stocks and huge inventory increases throughout the country, is this thing “collapsing” quicker than you had previously estimated back in Jan. ‘06?
Nope, just normally. This will take years to unravel, one way or the other. Right now nothing really happens in the big picture. Like right before the storm.
I would not dare to guess how fast this will fall apart. Could be quick (over the next few years) could be slow (taking more like 15 years)…I have heard the arguments for both, and IMHO both are valid.
It’s actually been slower than I had expected. Here, in San Diego, we led the way, and things have basically stalled for two years. I did not think it could have “plateaued” for so long. It was a bubble (regular housing bubble, not credit bubble) in 2001. We have a long, long way to go, IMHO.
All head to Naperville
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/sunpub/naper/business/6_3_NA21_HOMES_S1.htm
I live in Naperville. Bought over 10 years ago and now could not afford to buy the house I live in. Anecdotally, in my neighborhood, there are houses that have been vacant and for sale for over 10 months.
We’ve officially entered new territory. When a Realtor says “you can’t that” it is a giveaway. Don’t get me wrong, it was the same way a few years ago when the run up began circa 2001. Real estate agents didn’t want to list my substantially higher price. He suggested some $20k (7%) lower than I insisted upon. Sold at my price (entered escrow) in 5 hours. I was right, he was wrong, he got paid his full price and I got less.
So, now that I’ve sold all my investment real estate (as of Apr ‘06) what lies ahead? More investment in real estate of course but not until things correct. Corrections do not mean 2003 prices. That means that HALF of everyone buying in the last 4 years is underwater. The other half were moving up, unleveraged, legitimate conservative owner/occupiers, etc. Normally underwater is just a problem. This time is different. Never before have we allowed people to control assets with zero exposure. I take that back, we did it in 1929.
“Sellers have been “high balling”, the opposite of “low balling” for years.”
Nope, nope, nope….a seller can’t high ball an get the property without fraud by a lending companies appraiser. If the appraiser’s get their collective acts together on the appraisals then the buyer would have to step up to the table with a ton of cash and since that ain’t a’gona happen the seller will be brought to the table kicking and screaming or tossing the keys on the table before heading off to the funny farm….
well call it what you will, but it highballing happened and everyone was complicit.
NW Vegas is far from what most people think of as Vegas. Its a 30 minute ride on the freeway if there is no traffic, and there is always traffic. It’s an hour if you are going to work. The fact that someone paid this kind of money for that location tells you what a bubble we are having.
This market is slowing down big time! Just for kicks I went in about 6 open houses in Long Beach CA today. I was the only person in each of them (and there were open house signs on each corner I might add). Half of them it looked like the owner was throughing the open house. Each one of them the realtor or owner had this empty look on their face like why the hell won’t this house sell. One of them was a 1200 sq ft for $650,000 and another was a 1600 sq ft. (with a room added in the backyard) for $680,000. Both of those houses should probably be selling for about $250,000 if that. Anyways, I didn’t have it in me to make the low ball offers because these guys had a look on their face like they were ready to kill themselves already! But next week when I go to South orange county where I would like to buy, I will start giving them offers 40% lower than they are listed………muhahahaha!
When you make your bid, think “If they said yes, would I be happy or scared?” I know a couple people in NY/NJ who just had their “lowball” bids hit by sellers and are now afraid they are going to get stuck.
naw…. it’s pretty ez to back out
Just a thought.
The last sale in a neighborhood is the next “comp” for the appariser to use. If the sellor took a “low ball” offer, or was forced to lower the price due to a necessity to sell, then this “comp” will be the new standard.
Therefore, the exact opposite of the “bidding war” mentality will start to come into play, and each new “comp” will be in relation to the last one, although the trend will be down.
This weekend I went looking at condos in my local area and there were more condo’s than buyers (10 open houses). Anyways, I am interested in making an low offer ($240K) on one of them ($269K asking) so I went to one of the websites recommended on this board to check past selling prices/mortage history etc. Well turns out the sellers bought the house for $245K ($244.9K mortage) in 2004 and then took out a second mortgage ($134K) last year.
Also, talking to other residents in the community, I learned that they had not been paying their condo dues. I really like the condo but want to protected myself in case the seller is really f*ed. Can anyone give me some advice here?
Patience. A 11% off sale doesn’t sound like something to jump at.
“Some buyers are making offers of $20,000 to $30,000 less on homes priced right, and they can’t do that….”
AAAAAAHHHHHHH Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha