Small, Uninteresting Life

As I grow older, I realize more and more I am living the typical life.  I’m not saying that that is necessarily a bad thing.  I’m just saying it’s small and uninteresting.  Maybe that explains my lack of blog updates.  What do I report?  Well, I need to be better about reporting stuff.  So, I’m going to post the atypical stuff more often.

Saturday, Kristin got into the Georgetown PHD program!  Good for her!  Yah!  That’s exciting news indeed.  I’m really glad she got in because I know that she really does love history and the areas she is going to study.

Also Saturday, I put a bid on a house.  1816 N. Jackson St. in Arlington to be exact.  While the bid fell through I have learned a few things about house buying and selling.

There is drama in the buying and selling of houses.  I put a bid for $650k.  The asking price was about $700k.  No, I’m not being cheap by asking $50k below the asking price.  The thing with getting a home loan is that you can only get a loan from the bank for the amount the house appraises for.  Normally, you make a offer, they either accept it, reject it, or counter.  In my case, they countered with the asking prices of about $700k with a few concessions.  To me, that tells me they aren’t willing to negotiate, sure the concessions were worth about $10k, but there was more going on than just that.  Anyway, back to the appraisal, you only get an appraisal after there is an offer and acceptance.  So, if the home is worth less than what you bid, you either have to come up with the difference, renegotiate, or walk away, depending on your contract.  To me, to my real estate agent, and to many of the online estimates, the house was worth $649,500 when compared to other similarly situated houses.  That’s why I offered $650k.  I wasn’t trying to stiff the owner.  I felt I was bidding what the house was worth.

Here comes the drama though.  The real estate agent who is selling the house is also selling his house right across the street at 1817 N. Jackson St. for $749k.  His house has an estimated appraisal at $646,500.  So there are a couple of ethical dilemmas here.  1) The real estate agent would much rather have his house sell than the one across the street.  So logically, he would probably try to deter people from buying the house he is selling across the street and buy his instead.  Consequently, he may give the sellers bad advice in the hope that the buyer may just buy his house instead.  2) Property values are determined by the prices that property sell for around that property’s location.  So, if the house the real estate agent is representing across the street from his house sells for $700k, then his own house should sell for something around that.  So, if the buyer accepted my offer of $650k, the real estate agent would almost be assured that his house would sell for plus or minus $650k for him. Therefore, he would want to sellers to reject bids that would lower the value of his own property, i.e. like my $650k bid, and the real estate agent may give bad advice in order for him to profit.

I walked away from both the houses.  It sad to see that the house I put a bid on has been on the market for over 200 days.  There is a real grey area here, and there are a lot of potential ethical violations.  I’m not going to deal with it.  I feel bad for the seller.  I will wait and find the house I want.