Tb

I am so happy you all are taking time to help me sort out the buying experience. I know you all have other things to do and I'm very appreciative of the insight.

Vicky - the reminder to check tax records for the amount of sale is a good one and I will do that. The investor is actually an investment group. I've looked at the on line information for more than 25 houses that they own and they are buying and selling as rapidly as they can. The best I can tell at this point is they are buying as buyers of last resort typically at auction. They then put some $ into renovate and back on the market it goes, often with a "rent to own" option. They seem to be well established based on what I've been able to read about them, and I actually got referred to them by a colleague who I trust pretty well, so I'm not worried too much about getting the short end of the stick. But, I do realize that their goal is to maximize profit so I will certainly have some sort of professional help - its just a matter of how much I am able to pay to get that help. And as for the $40 per month, I know its only $40, but the goal of my family is to live below our means, and we are keenly aware of the exact breaking point for what we can and cannot pay and still do the things we want to do like save for retirment, kids college and give away as much as we can. The problem we're having is moving from the market in Florida where we can buy our current house - a 4/2 at 1955 sq ft fully renovated with hd wd floors and granite for $230K to the market there in No VA where $230K won't get very much at all. It's just an adjustment, which is why we're looking at REOs and FSBOs in the first place.

As for the houses we've bid on, a couple needed some work, but the last 2 were in very good shape, at least visaully. You never know what'll turn up in an inspection, of course. We've tried a couple of regular re-sales, but in both cases we offered between 5-7% below asking price and neither seller would budge, so we walked. We could have paid full price, and in retrospect probably should have, but you know what they say about hindsight.

Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts, Pat and Vicky. Vicky, I'll be checking out your blog. Any idea when that next post will be up? I'm always ready to learn how to help my chances. - Thu Jul 3 2008, 17:46

Thanks all for the help. The insight and suggestions have been quite helpful.

I think that the FSBOs we're seeing are investor owned, and that's why they are not overly interested in any realtors being invovled. I haven't talked with them yet, and don't know for certain that they'd balk at us having a buyers rep, but that's fairly typical of Investor owned FSBOs in Florida where we live. And with the asking prices I've seen, I'm not real comfortable tacking on an extra $7k to my loan amount to cover commissions. So, the issue is that we want to compensate her in some way for the work to this point, but don't neccessarily have the money to pay it outside of the closing. I think the best way ahead will just be to discuss the situation with our agent (I think she knows we're getting to the end of our rope with a "traditional" MLS housing search) and see what she and her broker have to say.

In regard to why our offers haven't been working, my suspicion is it is because we are using FHA financing because we have a low down payment. We have great credit, solid pre-approvals and on the 2 most recent REO properties have made offers signficantly above asking price, but no luck (we're looking mostly in the $350K and under range). So, about the only thing I can think of is that the banks don't want to deal with the FHA stuff.

Having just sold a home in Florida, I didn't anticipate being on the buying side being as difficult as it was being on the selling side, but I guess I was wrong there. It's astounding to me that we are practically begging banks and sellers to sell us their house, making offers above asking price (even above asking price plus the 3% in seller concessions we've asked for) and can't find someone to sell us a property. You guys have a very odd market up there and I'm very ready to be out of the game for a good while.

Thanks again for all the help and thoughts! - Thu Jul 3 2008, 12:36