What's the best way to find a house before it goes on the market?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be great to avoid a realtor and competition from other buyers if possible, wouldn't it?

What's the best way to find someone who is preparing to sell, but hasn't yet listed...neighborhood listserv? asking on dcum?

We're looking in N Arlington, which I know is a hot area, but I see houses in the sales records all the time that were never listed on the market. How does one find these gems?

Why do you want to avoid a Realtor? That sounds like it would be completely contrary to your stated goal.

OP here. I don't have any intention of getting into an anti-realtor thread, but my personal opinion is that I'm my own best agent acting in my own best interests. If a realtor is not bringing a buyer and seller together, I'm not sure I see the value added to the transaction. I know a few good lawyers who deal in real estate transactions, and they should be sufficient to navigate the paperwork.

Except that evidently you don't know where to begin to bring a buyer and seller together. That's what a Realtor does. Have you ever bought and sold a house?

Op here. Yep. 4 times. And each time the realtor has failed to show me that they added value to the transaction. I'm sorry to say that I'm not terribly impressed by the folks I've met who share your profession.

I was just curious if people had ideas beyond the obvious. There's some good thoughts here, and I'll continue to look to meet a seller on my own.

pp here.

I must say, OP, you sound like a complete and total ass. Real estate is *not* my profession, and I can promise you based on our limited interaction here that you are most definitely NOT your own best agent. If you behave in any way, shape or form even remotely as arrogantly as you come across here, you're probably ineffective.

I mean, you come on here admitting you don't know how to make a market in North Arlington and summarily reject the most obvious way to do it and then act all put-upon when that's pointed out. Dumb.

Sheesh, PP. You sound like the ass. OP answered your questions, and when you didn't like the answers, you resorted to name calling.

[Anonymous]

I think this works best if you are looking for a townhouse in a certain development or a condo in a certain building. A townhouse in our development sold because a buyer lost out on an end unit they wanted, so they wrote letters to all of the other owners of end units. It turns out that another couple was getting ready to put their house on the market in the next couple months and ended up selling to the buyer this way.

With single family houses, they are all so variable in prices, quality, size, etc, how you can know whether you would even want the house or not without looking at it.

I have seen realtor and builders send out mass mailing and such to buy up tear down lots for single family houses, but those are usually easier to identify.

[Anonymous]

There is currently a house in N. Arl being sold pre-market via the listserv. Try nextdoor

[Anonymous]

Unique opportunity to buy 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in Waycroft-Woodlawn before officially listed! Beautifully renovated/expanded 3-level colonial in McKinley/Swanson/Washington-Lee school district. Easy walk to Ballston/Metro, Custis Trail, close to Westover Shops and parks. Includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths on upper level, with expanded walk-in closet and marble tile master bath with custom steam shower. Main level includes powder room, open living room/kitchen with built-ins, crown moulding, stainless steel Viking appliances and wet bar. Fully finished basement with full bath. Yard is wonderfully landscaped and children's playset conveys. Owners are looking to rent back while their new home is being built. Terms negotiable. Contact Jeff Sellers/Keller Williams at 703-915-3033. Asking $1,100,000.

Additional Info.:
New addition 2009
Tankless water heater
2 new HVAC systems
2nd floor hall bath renovated 2012
New Jeld Wen Windows 2013
Renovated finished basement 2014
New hardscape patio/walkways/front porch and concrete driveway 2014
Composite wood deck 2009

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unique opportunity to buy 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in Waycroft-Woodlawn before officially listed! Beautifully renovated/expanded 3-level colonial in McKinley/Swanson/Washington-Lee school district. Easy walk to Ballston/Metro, Custis Trail, close to Westover Shops and parks. Includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths on upper level, with expanded walk-in closet and marble tile master bath with custom steam shower. Main level includes powder room, open living room/kitchen with built-ins, crown moulding, stainless steel Viking appliances and wet bar. Fully finished basement with full bath. Yard is wonderfully landscaped and children's playset conveys. Owners are looking to rent back while their new home is being built. Terms negotiable. Contact Jeff Sellers/Keller Williams at 703-915-3033. Asking $1,100,000.

Additional Info.:
New addition 2009
Tankless water heater
2 new HVAC systems
2nd floor hall bath renovated 2012
New Jeld Wen Windows 2013
Renovated finished basement 2014
New hardscape patio/walkways/front porch and concrete driveway 2014
Composite wood deck 2009

^ Now THAT sounds interesting.

[Steve]

Anonymous wrote:It would be great to avoid a realtor and competition from other buyers if possible, wouldn't it?

What's the best way to find someone who is preparing to sell, but hasn't yet listed...neighborhood listserv? asking on dcum?

We're looking in N Arlington, which I know is a hot area, but I see houses in the sales records all the time that were never listed on the market. How does one find these gems?

Since the obvious stuff was covered (sending letters, checking listservs, asking neighbors), I'll tell you about my own experience: My wife and I had the same issue - ready to buy with a specific area and home type in mind but stuck waiting due to lack of inventory. I ended up getting creative: 1) walked the neighborhoods and talked to neighbors; 2) researched tax records to see who might be interested in selling. These efforts were decently successful but extremely effort intensive, so I got the idea to build Knockity so that homeowners could search for buyers, especially pre-market.

We've had a very high level of success for pre-market homes for one of our users. We worked very closely with Hannah to send out her buyer profile to about 200 homes near a specific school. (Buyer profile: http://hannah.knockity.com). Building up a marketplace is hard and we knew that people weren't just going to start visiting our site randomly. We had to bring our website to the homeowners. We sent out letters and hung door tags to reach these (mostly older) homeowners and were surprised at the success rate! Hannah has seen 9+ homes directly from owners, pre-market. She may even be buying one of them.

From this effort we've learned even more and are in the middle of revamping our site to build something more sustainable and that is helpful to both the regular consumer as well as the real estate agents that support them. In the meanwhile, if you want any tips/insight from my personal experiences and observations, feel free to reach out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the thing, OP - as a buyer, having no agent doesn't help you, because its the seller who pays the agent (via your purchase.) As such, you are really looking to find a SELLER who doesn't want to use an agent... which is going to be a very small market and full of FSBOs who may be hard to deal with and have unrealistic expectations. In the market you're talking about, there's not a huge incentive not to involve an agent for the seller since things are going into price wars all the time.

What I am saying here is that you are really limiting the potential pool of houses to a really, really small number. You're potentially passing up houses you might like a lot better, that work better for your family etc.

You might be very different, but I would hate to buy a house simply because it was one of the handful sold without an agent.

For the love of God. The real estate commission is baked into the cost of the house. Op would certainly be paying for it.

Houses sell for what the market will bear. We sold our townhouse ourselves for the same price as the one a few units down, that had a realtor. We didn't discount the price because we didn't have an agent--we just kept all that money. Why wouldn't we? Someone was willing to pay it.

And as others have pointed out, sellers want the most they can get. We lucked out and had been contemplating FSBO when an identical unit near us went for sale and had a bidding war--we were able to scoop up a buyer and know we were getting a great price. Many people in a hot market are going to want an agent to market the property so they can get lots of bids-- they aren't going to want to sell at a low price privately just to save a commission, unless they have a reason to believe they can't get a better price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unique opportunity to buy 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in Waycroft-Woodlawn before officially listed! Beautifully renovated/expanded 3-level colonial in McKinley/Swanson/Washington-Lee school district. Easy walk to Ballston/Metro, Custis Trail, close to Westover Shops and parks. Includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths on upper level, with expanded walk-in closet and marble tile master bath with custom steam shower. Main level includes powder room, open living room/kitchen with built-ins, crown moulding, stainless steel Viking appliances and wet bar. Fully finished basement with full bath. Yard is wonderfully landscaped and children's playset conveys. Owners are looking to rent back while their new home is being built. Terms negotiable. Contact Jeff Sellers/Keller Williams at 703-915-3033. Asking $1,100,000.

Additional Info.:
New addition 2009
Tankless water heater
2 new HVAC systems
2nd floor hall bath renovated 2012
New Jeld Wen Windows 2013
Renovated finished basement 2014
New hardscape patio/walkways/front porch and concrete driveway 2014
Composite wood deck 2009

That agent has been flogging the house to buyers and agents for a month. It is waaaaay overpriced. His only other listing is for a house he owned and sold for $800,000. He has it listed for the buyer at $779,000.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unique opportunity to buy 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in Waycroft-Woodlawn before officially listed! Beautifully renovated/expanded 3-level colonial in McKinley/Swanson/Washington-Lee school district. Easy walk to Ballston/Metro, Custis Trail, close to Westover Shops and parks. Includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths on upper level, with expanded walk-in closet and marble tile master bath with custom steam shower. Main level includes powder room, open living room/kitchen with built-ins, crown moulding, stainless steel Viking appliances and wet bar. Fully finished basement with full bath. Yard is wonderfully landscaped and children's playset conveys. Owners are looking to rent back while their new home is being built. Terms negotiable. Contact Jeff Sellers/Keller Williams at 703-915-3033. Asking $1,100,000.

Additional Info.:
New addition 2009
Tankless water heater
2 new HVAC systems
2nd floor hall bath renovated 2012
New Jeld Wen Windows 2013
Renovated finished basement 2014
New hardscape patio/walkways/front porch and concrete driveway 2014
Composite wood deck 2009

That agent has been flogging the house to buyers and agents for a month. It is waaaaay overpriced. His only other listing is for a house he owned and sold for $800,000. He has it listed for the buyer at $779,000.

Interesting. That house sounds to be just what we want, but is about $50-$75k over what we're looking to spend. Onward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unique opportunity to buy 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home in Waycroft-Woodlawn before officially listed! Beautifully renovated/expanded 3-level colonial in McKinley/Swanson/Washington-Lee school district. Easy walk to Ballston/Metro, Custis Trail, close to Westover Shops and parks. Includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths on upper level, with expanded walk-in closet and marble tile master bath with custom steam shower. Main level includes powder room, open living room/kitchen with built-ins, crown moulding, stainless steel Viking appliances and wet bar. Fully finished basement with full bath. Yard is wonderfully landscaped and children's playset conveys. Owners are looking to rent back while their new home is being built. Terms negotiable. Contact Jeff Sellers/Keller Williams at 703-915-3033. Asking $1,100,000.

Additional Info.:
New addition 2009
Tankless water heater
2 new HVAC systems
2nd floor hall bath renovated 2012
New Jeld Wen Windows 2013
Renovated finished basement 2014
New hardscape patio/walkways/front porch and concrete driveway 2014
Composite wood deck 2009

That agent has been flogging the house to buyers and agents for a month. It is waaaaay overpriced. His only other listing is for a house he owned and sold for $800,000. He has it listed for the buyer at $779,000.

Interesting. That house sounds to be just what we want, but is about $50-$75k over what we're looking to spend. Onward.

So make an offer at what you're looking to spend, provided that is close to what it is worth. Everything is negotiable, and if it wasn't overpriced it would be gone already.