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Comment by epimetheus | Hacker News Reader

A bit of an anecdote because the article mentions my town specifically - Tacoma:

We put our house on the market Friday, April 8th, a bit below the "redfin estimate" - I saw it had gone live by 11am and we already had an interested party set up a viewing by 12pm. We showed the house 11 times by Monday morning and had 5 offers, some 12k above asking price. We accepted an offer by Tuesday (April 12). My head is still spinning from how fast this was and how many calls we were getting for appointments for viewing. This in a central Tacoma location, not exactly prime location (like the Proctor District or Stadium). We only had 3 other homes as comps in the area (1 mile radius).

Port Orchard / Gig Harbor area is very low on inventory too, which is where we are moving (Port Orchard, we looked in GH though).

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This plays out daily in hot real estate markets. I've been casually observing the Boston/Cambridge market and I have to scratch my head when I see properties on the market for only a few days and agents demanding offers by 2 days after the open house. Typically, I see listed on Thursday, OH Sat/Sun, offers due Tuesday evening.

If I were a seller I'd think that we priced the property too low, then again I can imagine sellers just want it over and done with and who cares when it's the difference of locking in 100% appreciation or 108% appreciation.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we could have waited it out and gotten other, higher offers. We actually chose to pick one that had a longer closing period (the house we wanted is occupied with people that want their kids to finish the school year), and with a dog and a toddler, the constant viewings were pretty inconvenient, enough so I'm happy at a lower price just to get it over with.

I have observed the strategy of the listing agent slightly under-pricing the home to cause a bidding war among willing buyers.

As mountineer22 points out, this is a strategy to concentrate serious offers and play them against one another. The lower you set the price, the more initial interest you get, the greater chance two or more potential buyers get excited. With competitive bids, you can find the true 'market' price pretty quickly.

In a hot market this apparently works well.

Anecdotally, when my wife and I were looking for our eventual home in Cambridge a few years ago, we went to more than a couple of "open houses" which were pro forma: Despite being listed on Wednesday, by Saturday the sellers already had an offer they were prepared to accept without even waiting for competitive bids!

Yup, a family member sold their condo in southie in 2014 and got an offer they accepted on the condition they cancel the open house...

This absolutely stinks of seller's agents shirking their fiduciary duty so they can move more properties faster and claim access to an "exclusive" club when they take buyer clients.

Kind of the same for us, in a first ring suburb of Minneapolis. Tried selling it two years back, had it on the market 5 months, not a single offer despite dropping the price $20k from our initial asking price. This year, put it on the market on a Thursday in middle of March, had an offer within 36 hours for our asking price, above what we ended up pricing it at before. It's pretty much like that all over the city.

Another Tacoman on HN? People in Tacoma know about this website?

Joking aside, you're in the Central District. Sales are hot north of I-5/SR-16 because a lot of the infrastructure up there is being rebuilt. South End is still a high poverty area with not a lot going on. In fact, the only major grocery store south of 56th anymore is the Fred Meyer on 72nd and Pacific Ave (not the best place to visit at night).

As someone who grew up here, Tacoma still has a long way to go.

Well, to be fair, H-Mart is a pretty enjoyable shopping experience, IMO, though I guess most would say it's not a "major" brand it does have 43 locations in the US. I agree though that South/East Tacoma is pretty bad in general.

The entire Puget Sound is absolutely nuts right now - Friends put an offer on a 2BR1BA listed at 470, they were willing to escalate to 540, the house, now pending, went for 675 with three offers going above 600 and had a total of 20 written offers on it.

Yeah, much of the area is benefiting because of the growth in Seattle, Ferry Port towns specifically benefit, Port Orchard, Bremerton, Bainbridge, and Kingston all seem to be doing rather well in growth. I know on Port Orchard's Facebook there's a lot of concern and anger about the "big city folk" coming over and ruining their small town feel. I hate to be contributing to that, but it's where my wife's new job is and I can telework a few days a week so the extended drive doesn't bother me.

Out of curiosity, do you know how many of your offers were from foreign nationals? I've seen some articles talking about how overseas investors are driving up property prices and was wondering if it was true in your case.

A different market, but I think the Chinese Money thing is a bit overblown.

The San Francisco and San Jose metro areas ranked ninth and sixth from the bottom, with all-cash deals representing only 28 and 24 percent of purchases, respectively. All-cash sales in San Francisco peaked at 36 percent in the first quarter of 2010, Zillow said.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/All-cas...

Could have fooled me. I get 3-4 letters a month from realtors wanting to buy my condo for a Chinese investor.

I think the person you are responding to was referencing my city/town as "not the market" more than anything, though I could be wrong. Seattle has many stories of cash markets from foreign investment too, but not many venture as far south of Seattle as Tacoma. That might be changing, but my house isn't in a desirable neighborhood either.

My father sold his west Texas home in cash to Chinese nationals. West Texas. And the process took 24 hours.

I doubt it's overblown.

Been to Miami lately? Take a drive around Edgewater. Foreign money is not a myth.

The biggest problem is operational for these huge towers. The occupancy rates are all over the place with wild fluctuations. It makes things like staffing and water pressure difficult to manage.

Out of curiosity did you list it with Redfin? I've always been interested to hear how that experience compares with a traditional agent.

I did. I went that route mostly due to the free consultation button. The agent assigned to us was fairly good, but was probably overwhelmed with multiple houses for sale, and communication was somewhat lacking. I went with a different realtor, one I knew personally, for buying; I should have gone with him for both sides, he's very good, friendly, and calls multiple times a day when needed. Our house wasn't expensive enough for the area for redfin to be involved, which is why we got a partner agent.

Overall, I like Redfin for looking at potential houses, but it needs something more, IMO. Like offers and other details on their website (account dashboard right now just links to your listing, nothing else). Maybe even an electronic signature feature for offers, etc.

I had a similar experience with Redfin. I wanted to use a particular agent my friends had used and recommended but because my home was not expensive enough/in a hot enough neighborhood, I got pawned off to a partner agent. I can understand their reasons for doing this but it really doesn't make you feel like a valued customer.

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