OP here. I took a walk around the house. I saw the bubbling exterior paint. I pushed the exterior bubbling paint. Water oozed out.

I called someone in who provides estimates on re-siding and painting. He is the first of a total of three that I'm going to get in here, in addition to the inspector who comes tomorrow. He said: Whoah, this house is a giant sponge! It's rotting from the outside in! I said, "That's what I thought."

My real estate agent did not walk me through any sort of careful look-through like this at any of the homes we saw together. Mostly a lot of "oh, this is a pretty house." and "look at the view." and "there's a lot of demand for houses these days--multiple escalating offers!"

Yeah.

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Let's say it takes approx. $1000 or less to make an uncomplicated offer and follow that offer to closing with a lawyer.

If you're talking about buying a house for $800K, and if you feel you can negotiate on your own behalf just as well as an agent could (I suppose that's variable depending on agent and buyer), that means.... wowie. You could make at least 23 failed $800K offers and break even.

Of course, you'd also have to do all your own searching for homes.

Are there any buyers left who don't do all their own searching for homes? Anyone not heard of the Internet yet?

The only time I see an agent as useful is when there are not many listings, and a perfect, underpriced home is about to come on the market, and the agent shows it to you, you make an offer and the buyer accepts it before listing the house, thus fending off a bidding war on a well-priced house.

Long gone are the days when the realtor drove you around in her Caddy. I'm old enough to remember those days, and I'm sure glad they are in the past!!

We bought and sold on our own. Get the forms from the seller, fill them in, take them to a real estate attorney or a title company, who have real estate attorneys on staff. Have them review the forms, pay them a fee (taken out at closing, lawyers always get paid first), and you've saved yourself $20K or more. Who's going to argue with that?? Oh, yeah, the real estate agents, that's who. They lost that nice fat $20K plus for doing not much of anything.

It's long past time to change the system so real estate agents get paid by the hour just like every other working stiff. Such a racket! And the real estate lobby is the biggest in the US of A!! They want to keep those fat commissions rollin' on in!

Good luck, OP. Don't hire an agent!! In many cases, and yours in particular, an agent is superfluous.

Anonymous wrote:DCUM-ers! If ever I've needed you, I need you now (almost as much as when I was a new mom with a 1 week old baby, sleep deprived, and insane)!

We want to put an offer on a house-- it's the house we're renting--without our buyers agent (she know this, we're not sneaking around her back). We want to do it quickly-- can someone direct me to a standard contract/offer online that we might use?

We do not live in DC metro area anymore. We're in Washington State--moved here a little while ago. Though I think the offer docs are very similar across all state lines. ??

THANK YOU!!!

Use a real estate attorney at a title company. Thy will walk you through the purchase agreement, key terms, sign and submit to sell side agent. They can also claim the fee and rebate it back to use.

Wow. Let's say it takes approx. $1000 or less to make an uncomplicated offer and follow that offer to closing with a lawyer.

If you're talking about buying a house for $800K, and if you feel you can negotiate on your own behalf just as well as an agent could (I suppose that's variable depending on agent and buyer), that means.... wowie. You could make at least 23 failed $800K offers and break even.

Of course, you'd also have to do all your own searching for homes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't need an agent. You can do it with a real estate lawyer. We did. They can bill by the hour - MUCH cheaper than an agent. We used Paragon Title - any title company can do it. Call them and tell them you want an offer drawn up.

This.

Much cheaper to who? The buyer doesn't pay the agent. OP, is the house currently listed with a realtor or are you just approaching the owner out of the blue?

Are you joking? We lowered our offer by 3% since we has no agent and therefore seller didn't have to pay ours. Duh.

Well, actually many listing agents put it not their contract with the seller that they still get 6% if the buyer has no agent. It is more work for the seller. How do you know they wouldn't have accepted your offer even if you had an agent?

How do you know? How do you know? How do you know? For cryin' out loud, you never know. It's an assessment of risk game. And the seller IS AN AGENT.

No, I don't throw around (let's see, calculate 3% on 800K+ blip bleep blip, OMG!! THAT'S at least $24,000!!!!) big sums of cash casually. If you were a seller who was also a real estate agent, would you? (No, you would NOT).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't need an agent. You can do it with a real estate lawyer. We did. They can bill by the hour - MUCH cheaper than an agent. We used Paragon Title - any title company can do it. Call them and tell them you want an offer drawn up.

This.

Much cheaper to who? The buyer doesn't pay the agent. OP, is the house currently listed with a realtor or are you just approaching the owner out of the blue?

Are you joking? We lowered our offer by 3% since we has no agent and therefore seller didn't have to pay ours. Duh.

Well, actually many listing agents put it not their contract with the seller that they still get 6% if the buyer has no agent. It is more work for the seller. How do you know they wouldn't have accepted your offer even if you had an agent?

Anonymous wrote:i dont understand why you would not use your agent for this.... it is the seller paying the commission not the buyer. yes in theory you could say "hey seller lower the price 3% because i have no agent".... but how do you know that the agent could not have negotiated you a better price, thus saving you t hat 3% anyway?

We don't. But I doubt that the agent could negotiate down 3%. We've lived in the house for a few years. We've done open houses and we've been trolling the real estate listings for several months if not more. I think we're pretty informed.

It is, however, a risk. It's a risk when you hire an agent, too. How the heck do you know how well your agent is working for you? Are you listening in on the negotiations? No. You have no idea...

Anonymous wrote:i dont understand why you would not use your agent for this.... it is the seller paying the commission not the buyer. yes in theory you could say "hey seller lower the price 3% because i have no agent".... but how do you know that the agent could not have negotiated you a better price, thus saving you t hat 3% anyway?

You can still negotiate a great price without an agent - you just need to show the sellers the most recent sale comps and offer accordingly.

Phew! Here's the deal! I called a local real estate attorney, and they said to get forms to make the offer from our landlord (who is a RE agent). We then fill them out (in pencil) and bring them to a RE attorney who walks us through the steps (including reviewing any boundary encroachments, etc). This is an hourly fee. If the whole thing goes through, the attorney's office estimates that a standard, non-complicated offer through their office can cost around $700.

Not too shabby. Of course, if the offer doesn't go through, then we're SOL for that money. But in this case, we'll probably give it a whirl.

Anonymous wrote:i dont understand why you would not use your agent for this.... it is the seller paying the commission not the buyer. yes in theory you could say "hey seller lower the price 3% because i have no agent".... but how do you know that the agent could not have negotiated you a better price, thus saving you t hat 3% anyway?

i would just negotiate for the buyer agent to lower their rate or pay a flat fee for writing this specific contract on the house you live in. something in the buyer agrement like "3% commission unless buyer buys XYZ home, in which agent will credit 50% of commission to buyer" or something like that.

a real estate attorney could work too, and i dont know how washington state works, your agent may still be allowed to get the 3% if you have an agreement...

Holy smokes. If we are buying a $800-900K house, even 1% IS A TON OF MONEY. I am calling the agent to ask if she can do it for a flat fee.

LAWYERS OUT THERE: How much would you charge to draw up a contract offer?

I don't want any help with the negotiation process. I just want the forms drawn up right, that's all... We are dealing directly with the landlord, as we always have.

In the "no agent" camp, and I'm sure the seller will be happy to help. If you feel at all uncomfortable with the terms, by all means have a lawyer/title agent review, but we had an excellent experience buying on our own, with a helpful seller's agent, and were able to get the house for significantly less as a result (other offers for more money than ours were declined due to the need to pay commission). We included the standard appraisal and inspection contingencies.

i dont understand why you would not use your agent for this.... it is the seller paying the commission not the buyer. yes in theory you could say "hey seller lower the price 3% because i have no agent".... but how do you know that the agent could not have negotiated you a better price, thus saving you t hat 3% anyway?

i would just negotiate for the buyer agent to lower their rate or pay a flat fee for writing this specific contract on the house you live in. something in the buyer agrement like "3% commission unless buyer buys XYZ home, in which agent will credit 50% of commission to buyer" or something like that.

a real estate attorney could work too, and i dont know how washington state works, your agent may still be allowed to get the 3% if you have an agreement...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't need an agent. You can do it with a real estate lawyer. We did. They can bill by the hour - MUCH cheaper than an agent. We used Paragon Title - any title company can do it. Call them and tell them you want an offer drawn up.

This.

Much cheaper to who? The buyer doesn't pay the agent. OP, is the house currently listed with a realtor or are you just approaching the owner out of the blue?

Are you joking? We lowered our offer by 3% since we has no agent and therefore seller didn't have to pay ours. Duh.

Anonymous wrote:Ask her to send you a blank contract. We've bought 3 houses this way. You are no idiot!

We also just bought a house without agents - except in our case the seller was not an agent either. Make no mistake, it IS much more work for both parties. and it's more important to remain amicable/non-contentious since there is not agent buffer, but overall we do not regret it. Agreeing to price was easy. We were both on the same page WRT what the house would "go for" and then we took off 3% since they didn't have to pay our agent and kept 3% for themselves since they don't have to pay a listing agent.

The harder part was arranging for inspections, etc and then agreeing on the repairs that needed to be made. Our seller had a very high opinion of the condition of his house (it was very well maintained for a 21 year old house) and was kind of in denial and rude to our inspector about hidden things that were wrong. Not super major stuff, but not exactly minor either. We worked it out, but mainly bc my husband negotiates deals for a living and does not find haggling to be awkward, unlike me.