4 ms·

Prices in the east bay are still way over asking and there is a lot of cash. My wife and I paid $75k over asking for our 1300ft2, 1 bed, 1 bath house in north

by malyk 13y ago

Prices in the east bay are still way over asking and there is a lot of cash. My wife and I paid $75k over asking for our 1300ft2, 1 bed, 1 bath house in north oakland just shy of a year ago. We bid on 6 houses total and every one of those was in the same ballpark over ask. I'm not sure what it's like over the hills, but in north oakland and berkeley you'll still have to pay over asking and compete against 5-10 other bids.

pc86 13y ago
I see this and it blows my mind, coming from a low-income family growing up and a low-COL but mid-to-high-income household now. I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it (and having the seller pay most or all of closing costs is a non-starter around here). We only paid $113k for our 3br 2.5ba home (list $139k) with the seller chipping in $7k or so seller's help and although it wasn't the case when we bought it a few years ago, we make more in a year than the house is worth. This is tempered by the fact that the medium HHI of our zip-code is in the high 30k's and we've got the amenities to match, but we're in a suburban area outside of small city/large town (200k or so during the week?) and with me being a developer my income isn't necessarily tied to a specific geographic area.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  "I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it..." For what it's worth, paying above asking is a pretty bizarre concept to me as well, and I lived most of my life in LA (LA LA, not an outlying area) before moving up to SF. Having owned and sold a home in LA, I would have been smoking crack to believe I'd get my asking price, let alone exceed the asking. And there was no shortage of crazy money floating around that town. But here in SF, asking is basically the floor, not the ceiling. This is probably because of supply & demand. SF has much more constrained inventory and less liquidity in that inventory -- so you get things like bidding wars, and multiple offers on listings are the rule and not the exception. I have seen people get carried away with their pricing here, and the market usually punishes those people until they lower their asking prices. But for condos or houses priced "appropriately" relative to their comps, asking is almost assured, and above-asking is far from uncommon.

by malyk 13y ago

pc86 13y ago

I see this and it blows my mind, coming from a low-income family growing up and a low-COL but mid-to-high-income household now. I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it (and having the seller pay most or all of closing costs is a non-starter around here). We only paid $113k for our 3br 2.5ba home (list $139k) with the seller chipping in $7k or so seller's help and although it wasn't the case when we bought it a few years ago, we make more in a year than the house is worth. This is tempered by the fact that the medium HHI of our zip-code is in the high 30k's and we've got the amenities to match, but we're in a suburban area outside of small city/large town (200k or so during the week?) and with me being a developer my income isn't necessarily tied to a specific geographic area.

jonnathanson 13y ago
"I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it..." For what it's worth, paying above asking is a pretty bizarre concept to me as well, and I lived most of my life in LA (LA LA, not an outlying area) before moving up to SF. Having owned and sold a home in LA, I would have been smoking crack to believe I'd get my asking price, let alone exceed the asking. And there was no shortage of crazy money floating around that town. But here in SF, asking is basically the floor, not the ceiling. This is probably because of supply & demand. SF has much more constrained inventory and less liquidity in that inventory -- so you get things like bidding wars, and multiple offers on listings are the rule and not the exception. I have seen people get carried away with their pricing here, and the market usually punishes those people until they lower their asking prices. But for condos or houses priced "appropriately" relative to their comps, asking is almost assured, and above-asking is far from uncommon.