I sued them, the owner of the place, and the land lord... People can sue for anything and any business.
Spoken like a true American! :biggrin:
So whats the point of owning it for a few years and selling for what you paid?
I tend to sell everything way to soon and leave a lot of money on the table but I hardly ever have to sell anything at a loss...
I agree... but when you personally buy 180+ home in a few years, not every one of them is going to work out. But, this one was also a different case. I bought the property at 10% below FMV, rented it out to a doctor for a few months, and 6 months into it he decided he wanted to do a 12 mos lease option and lock in the price at the signing of the lease. At that time prices were still going up, so when he bought it I thought I'd be losing a couple hundred K, but I was locking it in at just over $1m with a $50k deposit. All he needed was a year to get his credit fixed (doctors
), and it was a win/win for both of us. Well, when the market started dropping, he said he still wanted it, but we couldn't sell for the agreed upon price because nobody would lend at 120% of a homes value (shees, fickle lendlers
). The property is still renting out, and he is still paying WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY more than my ARM (even when it comes up in 2 years :biggrin: ), but I don't see him buying it before or even after that, so I haven't really lost much. :smile:
I too tend to leave a TON of money on the table. As most on here know... I specialize in the high end housing market (i.e. mansions). I literally bought a property last year for $1.4m (it was worth $2.4m) and sold it to another investor for $1.7m. Yes... I left $700k on the table. But, I turned the property in 90 days and made $300k with NO CARRYING COSTS. So, I know exactly what you mean. We are on the same wavelength when it comes to the term "don't be greedy, or you just might get what you ask for!"
One other thing too. you paid 875k and one year later it appraised for 1.2m, thats not selling price that is greedy banks wanting to loan out money. A lot of the gains, unrealistic gains in RE were just that, ultra high appraisals that the property would never actually sell for. I have done the same thing on more properties than I can even begin to count. I only seen one appraiser give what I thought was a true market value on a property in the last 4 or so years. When that appraisal didn't work for the bank they just sent out another appraiser and got the number they needed.
It's all subjective... when the market was skyrocketing, by the time you closed escrow on a property, the equity was already surpassing the "inflated appraisal". So, a lot of times appraisers were trying to "guess" what the property would be worth by the time escrow closed. So, yes the numbers were high at the time of appraisal. But were they on target at COE? Absolutely. That changed drastically by the end of last year when the market was crashing, and people were doing anything and everything to bail on their own personal homes and offload inventory.
March should be the worst month for adjustments, so I have heard. I would expect your end of 2008 to be right on target.
Agreed... There are no absolutes in RE, so everything is mostly opinion. For all we know the government could lock the rates on all these ARM's and everything would settle by mid next year. But, just because there are going to be thousands of foreclosures into next year, doesn't necessarily mean it is going to drastically affect the market. The market can still move upward with foreclosures, especially since MOST of the lenders on these upcoming foreclosures were sub-prime and good percentage of the lenders don't even exist anymore (which was the plan from the beginning).
I do trade the market and have for over 7 years and NEVER let a winner become a loser EVER and I would think that about anything.
See above
A house to me is not a investment it's a place to sleep. After all the money you spend on taxes, up keep, payments etc it's not a investment.
That's why you trade the market, and you're not in RE. Because that could not be further from the truth.
We have a long long way to go with this mess. Certainly not "bottoming" in 2008.
Like I said in 2005 or beg of 2006 - maybe 5 years or so for a bottom, and then many more years of zero gains. R/E shouldn't go up quickly, and it WON'T go down quickly.
Well I certainly hope you're wrong :biggrin: , but nobody knows for sure. I SERIOUSLY doubt it will take 5 years to bottom though. Everybody seems to think foreclosure rates and ARM's are the sole reason for our current market, and that just isn't true. While it may be a HUGE problem, and a BASE for our current conditions, it's certainly not the only reason. There are many other factors. If we could get lending under control (no it's not under control now, it's dead), and make it so people can actually start buying homes again, the market would pick back up. Right now you damn near can't buy a home unless you have a 700+ score with 30%+ down and FULL DOC. I see lending picking back up early next year (Mar/April), the market leveling off, and a VERY slow creep in the upward direction for the next few years.
I have NEVER heard a real estate broker say "Don't buy now, it's a bad time". Throughout this most recent fiasco, real estate people are still saying "buy buy buy, we've hit bottom". Like if they keep telling people to buy, it will turn things around and they can get back to making money.
I am not a broker, nor do I even have my RE license (for liability reasons). And right now IS a good time to buy. Only time will tell if it's the best time. Really, I could care less if others are buying. I deal in a different market which is not adversely affected by the current state of the SFR market. My only concern is that lending becomes stable.
Great example Shifty Bob. Spoken like a true Investor.:biggrin:
I will be in Corona next week to visit family.
If you've got some extra time we should go grab a beer or something...
