Beaverstate

Homes in my area are selling as quickly as 2 or 3 days at the asking price.

How quickly in your area?

Prices are steadily increasing here, but not too fast, yet.

What about your area?

WEBlue

We just bought a house. (Yay!) We started the process a while ago, and have been through a few twists & turns, so I'm not sure how indicative our house purchase is of the present housing market in our area.

We got our house for well below asking price. We had thorough inspections done & based on the findings put in a substantially lower offer. After a lot of back-&-forthing the sellers agreed.

However...we are on a section of the coast with lots of second-home and summer-home stock. I think the market is still slower in this area, as even well-to-do people are no longer snapping up second homes the way they used to in the heady days before the housing crash.

Yorkieabroad

Our local housing market hasn't suffered as others have over recent years, and has remained reasonably healthy. I haven't seen any recent realtor reports on days on market in general, but anecdotal evidence in specific areas suggests things are moving quickly.

We are in the process of selling a condo in Downtown Houston and that was on the market 2 days before receiving an offer from the eventual buyer. Price agreed was 99.5% of listing. The only reason it took so 'long' was it went on the market on Thursday and the first viewings were on the Saturday.

More locally out in Katy with the summer approaching, activity is increasing. I know of half a dozen in our immediate area /school zone that are moving out over the next month and none of them have been on the market more than a week...most have sold within 24 hours. We have a Scandinavian neighbor who has 10 days on the market so far, but they are trying it on with a crazy high price, c.20% above 'market'. They are heading back 'home' but don't need to leave till end August so figured they would give it a shot and see if anyone bites. It's a reasonable house, and supply is quite short, so who knows, they may be successful.

I did see something new round here recently...a realtor sign in the front yard advertising " coming soon". Two weeks later when it officially came on the market, there were 6 buyers lining up for it. It sold within the day, but only went for the asking price, rather than at a feeding frenzy induced higher price, which I'm sure is what the realtor was after! So how long was it on the market...the 2 weeks of the pre-launch marketing, or less than 24 hours. I don't know/care....that was just playing with numbers....

notonuksoil

We are trying to buy where we are at the moment similar situation here but the good ones are going within 2 or three days considerably more than listing price. We were at an open house two weeks ago, 3 bed house only 1700sq ft but with a fully finished basement, move in ready listed at $569k there were 30+ people at the house while we were there on Saturday morning. Sunday morning there were 11 offers they then asked for last and final offers by midday Monday and it was sold for over $600K

AmerLisa

The housing market is slightly picking up here, and I mean slightly. However, the only thing that seems to be selling are the short sales... And of course there were a lot of them.

On another note, just found out yesterday that Bank of America (along with other big banks) are selling a lot of their servicing of residential mortgages off to mortgage companies... Absolutely love this practice...

Tarkak9

Although it depends on which particular area one is referring to, but overall, its been turning in the Mile Hi area. The mean and average price is up from last year (but, inventory has been slightly lower). Anything decent under the 300k mark is getting all the attention and generally going fast, with some getting multiple offers. Condos and townhomes is similar but one problem is that during the past couple years many communities haven't been renewing their FHA status; which on one hand means that its slimmer pickings for many buyers but obviously a sweeter spot for a seller whose condo's community is fha approved.

Recovery has to come from the ground up. Mid-range has been stable but it depends on whereabouts in the metro area one is referring to. Higher end property is sluggish, things are moving but there is a good amount to chose from.

Yorkieabroad

Where are you? Maybe my geography is off - I thought you were up Dallas way, no? I hadn't realized they had suffered that badly in the housing collapse.

AmerLisa

No, we're in Washington state....

Mr Weeze

We went through the buying process recently, and we were having to check the local MLS listing site about every 30 minutes to try and be the first to view a property. We went to view two that came on the market that day, put in the asking price and didn't get the property.

We were the first to view the property we did get, and got the first offer in at the asking price. There were 5 offers by the end of the day, some of which will have been blind offers. This was in February, and we closed the end of April. Our realtor was of the opinion that if the house had been put to market at the correct time, it would have sold for at least another 5% above what we paid for it with the current market conditions.

Yorkieabroad

Oops - that's why I went quiet on the geography game thread

Pulaski

Not sure what you think the problem is, because most banks, including mid-large banks, and the federal housing agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc), sell off the servicing rights to the highest bidder, and have done so for decades. I don't care where I send my mortgage payment, or who processes it, it makes no difference to me.

Michael

We had a discussion about the housing market about 2 months ago. The following thread starting at post #50 talks about the Case-Shiller index (20 metropolitan areas), interest rates, and housing starts.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...=789973&page=4

SultanOfSwing

This just happened to ours, actually. We'd only had it just short of four years as well but I guess BoA had made all the money they were going to make off us

The good thing is though, in the process they discovered that they had been holding too much in escrow so we're due a nice refund from that.

The problem many people run into, as we discovered when doing research on who they are selling them to, is that some of the new servicers have held checks past the due date and in some cases have pushed homes into foreclosure by doing so.

We pay electronically, so this wouldn't be an issue for us but apparently it does happen

AmerLisa

The problem is that we aren't informed of it, asked, nor do they give a rat's ass if it's ok. Yes, yes, yes I understand we're nothing to big business... Just feel like so many other cattle in the stockyard...

AmerLisa

The new servicing agent doesn't have a good rep, apparently. So they are trying to change and the intro email we got the other day stated that with new transfers, there would be no penalties for 60 days until things were smoothed out with the transfer. Hopefully it goes smoothly, but I still think they're all a bunch of money grubbing twats.