Weekend Linkage – January 24, 2010
Jan 24, 2010 
Sun
Yes, we are buying a house!
We have been looking since last December. After the new year, we went to a few open houses in this area, but found one we really like. Then early this week, some new listings in a very nice, gated community came up, all short sales. Since our agent lives in a place that quite far, we can only go to see the houses in the weekend. While we were waiting for our agent to come, one of them was taken and another one also received multiple offers. After seeing the house this morning, we decided to make an offer before the Monday deadline, with a price that’s $20K above the asking price. Even though we feel we are in a pretty good shape to compete financially, there’s no guarantee that we will eventually get the house because, as you know, the current owners don’t make the finally decision on whom they want to sell. So this could be a long process even if we could go through the first round.
BTW, the property record shows that the current owners bought the house in 2005 at the peak of the housing market for $960K. Now they are selling it for only $620K. Could be a good bargain 
Weekend Readings
- Is Life Fair?
- How To Buy Stocks At The Prices You Want
- Saving With Purpose: The College Savings Fund
- Credit Cards and the Minimum Payment – Don’t Fall Into the Minimum Payment Trap
- Saving for College – An Exercise in Depression
- How Risky is the Stock Market – The Quiz
- TurboTax Software vs Manual Income Tax Returns
- New Car Tax Deduction
- 5 Income Tax Filing Assumptions that Could Cost You Big
- Debt Is A Lot Like Chewing Gum
- Backdoor into the Roth IRA: You’re Invited to the Tax-Free Party
- List of 2009 Tax Deductions and Credits
Carnivals
- Carnival of road to financial independence #15
- Carnival of Personal Finance – Support Haiti Edition | Million Dollar Journey
- Carnival of Money Stories: Springtime in Arizona Edition | Funny about Money
Photo credit: TheTruthAbout…
Good luck! It’s so weird how different the housing markets are. I just saw a house that was purchased for $1.3 million last year, and totally remodeled and asking $2.45 million and it already in contract after a couple weeks! The selling agent said the offer was 100% cash!
There is so much wealth here in San Fran, with Google, Youtube etc it’s obscene! Just wait for Facebook to go public too this year.
Let us know if your offer gets accepted!
It only says that there are a lot of rich people in San Fran
We definitely need some luck to get the house because it seems it’s quite competitive when the price is good enough. We should hear from the owners very soon, but probably have to wait a long time before we know whether the bank will take our offer if the owners accept it.
Yeah, you’re telling me! The 3/3.5 bedroom house is about 2,400 squarefeet for $2.45 million. Pretty impressive.
It’s almost like buying a rare Ferrari. They continue appreciating, or they depreciate very little. You can spend $250,000 on the newest Ferarri now, and sell it in a year for $250,000-$270,000. The key is to have that money in the first place. Buying the Ferrari is cheaper than buying an ford, toyota, or hyundai!
Congrats! That is so exciting!
Sun, how did it go?!
We didn’t get it. Even though our offered price is higher and we plan to put 30% down payment with no other contingency, the owner decided to go with a cash offer at the listed price
Can’t beat cash nowadays, even though I don’t think we have any problem getting the loan.
That’s weird Sun. If I’m the seller, whether I get cash from you, or cash from the bank is the same thing!
That’s one dumb seller. Unless the seller was the bank, and they were sick of dealing with flakes.
Well, cash offer does make things easier and transactions faster. Since this is a short sale, the bank will have the final say on whether to let the sale go ahead or not. Since there may be about $300K difference between the loan and the sale price, the transaction may not go through after all. The price is good with short sales, but there are a lot of uncertainties.