Updates to Buying Houses At Price Per Unit

I spoke to my buyer's agent yesterday, and she said to also take the time the house has been on the market into consideration--if the house has been on the market over 90 days, and it's just a thousand or two (or maybe 5) outside your range, chances are you can make an offer anyway, and it gets accepted. You may hear uproarious laughter, or wailing tears, when the homeowner realizes just how much his/her home is REALLY worth to a serious buyer.

The bottom line is: people (or banks) don't want these houses. All you can do is try.

We're going out Monday and touring three houses, and I have about four more on the back burner awaiting a small comp drop. I also noticed some houses in my area that've all of a sudden dropped as much as $20k in price--maybe they read my article. Maybe they read my dramatic expounding on Zillow. I don't care--somebody got the message!

Things may get real interesting after Labor Day, I do believe. We frugalites buy our coats in June, our shorts in January, and go Christmas shopping right after Christmas, so why not go house shopping after the season's over (approximately Easter-Labor Day)? This is why I'm building a back-burner pile of listings for when the true sales start.

UPDATE #2: I got into a conversation about real estate prices with a bank officer (I had gone to the bank on a totally unrelated matter--we were waiting on a fax, and got to talking), and she let slip that the banks won't finance anything above and beyond last year's tax assessment. So now I have two benchmarks to go by: comps for approximate market value, and tax assessments for maximum loan amount.

Once the owners and agents learn about this, I imagine a whole new wave of price-lowering is going to happen! Off i go to Zillow to announce it.

The tax records should be available online for free--check Google. If not, a visit to the courthouse with a list of properties is definitely worthwhile. All you need is the street address and zip, not the "legal" address. These are public records.