Kiffany

We are waiting only because we haven't hit the buttom of this economy situation and housing prices are going to continue to fall. The election does not matter in our decision. No candidate can offer an immediate fix for the situation. I don't want to sound all doom and gloom here but houses were overpriced, banks were qualifying people who shouldn't haven't gotten the loans they did and now we are paying for everyone's greed. Sorry to say but current homeowners if needing to sell in the near future are going to pay for it.

We don't want to buy a house right now, when we can wait 6 months or so and get it much cheaper. Plus, we entering into winter, the slow time for house sales annually. We are looking to pay 20% less than asking price. Truthfully, I feel that this is what the actual true value of homes should be in our area. The prices just kept getting inflated and some of it was driven by the county assessors who kept increasing values so much to get more property tax money in Nebraska. Homeowners certainly didn't want to sell their home under the assessed value so they kept selling higher and higher. - Fri Oct 10 2008, 17:30

I am a buyer right now in Nebraska. I get 90% of my information from the Internet. I use Zillow,Trulia, my county assessors's web page, local realtor pages, craigs list, and for sale by owner pages. I have done a ton of searches using google, I search for: homes for sale in nebraska, for sale by owners, real estate for sale, and any other combination of terms that I can find.

I also look through my local newspaper on the web. I love the online virtual tours and tons of pics available. I has really helped us to narrow done which houses we want to go look at personally. This has saved myself and our realtor alot of time. I also do alot of research on our county's assessor page. I can see who owns a property, when they bought it, how much they paid, comps, taxes, how many owners, etc.

The biggest things that I am looking for in a realtor's page is a good search tool. I want to narrow down my search by price range, # of bedrooms, # of baths, garage, etc. And pictures, pictures, pictures! With the high gas prices, I think alot of people want to really take a look at a property through pictures first before driving across town.

Hope this helps! - Mon Oct 6 2008, 13:28

David thanks for the information. Here is more infor. if it helps.

We would like to have our agent give us comps for the area but I don't know if it appropraite to ask him as this house is listed FSBO. I would normally go with what the other houses in the area are selling per sq ft for but all the houses across the street are valued at about $150-170 and they average about $110/sqft which seems low for this house. This house is the only house completed on its side of the street. The houses on this side will be all of the same construction and type and valued at $275k or at least they were when they were contracted to be built by the builder a year ago.

I am not a builder, but from the houses we have seen I would say that this house is above average construction, an energy star home, granite countertops, etc. But buyers could buy the new house for sale by the builders which is on the south side of Lincoln (known as the "better, more expensive area to live") at the same listing price, it was in the parade of homes and is still on the market since about March. The fact that the new house has not sold, leads me to believe that they are going to have a hard time selling this one also.

So, right now this is the most expensive home in the immediate area until others are finished. There are other homes a street or so over that are more expensive. However, Trulia gives the average sell price for that suburb at $120k.

I know that we would be asking the owners to take a considerable loss here, but we have been shopping for a while and I know that they will be very lucky to sell right now, especially in that price range. We are also considering another home in the Fallbrooks area which is a much more upscale and nicer neighborhood. There were we are looking at a few homes in the same price range, new never lived in, about the same sq ft. and have been on the market for 2-3 years.

I know that the only thing we can do is try the offer and see what they say. I feel bad for their loss, but we are not the cause of the market going down. I don't know if maybe we should just wait and if they don't sell it by winter time put our offer in. They are planning to be moved by the beginning of Nov. But they haven't had their home on the market long, so they don't really have a feel for how cold the market is. - Sat Sep 20 2008, 16:54