The Silverback said:

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We listed our house in 78739 this past weekend and had about 30 showings.... around 10 of them were agents facetiming their clients in California. Crazy.

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it's crazy how many of those Californians will put out multiple offers on houses they've never seen, and then back out of all but one once they make a decision. Texans simply cant compete with that.

I suppose there is a chance they lost earnest money on the 2nd or 3rd homes they may have put offers out on?

They only lose option money. Some of these offers they are throwing out are high but have real low options. Not all of these are like this, but it is a commonality.

And by 'Low' option, I mean option money that would be considered 'normal' when the market was not stupid.

my bad. yeah I meant option money.

Option period is $1000 on homes here it seems...

I remember when my option was $200.

In 2014 we had offers on 3 unseen houses with $1000 options on each all over list. We were in Cape Cod for the weekend and three we liked came up. None of the offers were accepted but the most we were on the line for was 3k and we new based on the 18 homes we offered on prior to that the chances of all three accepting were slim to none

evan_aggie said:

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my bad. yeah I meant option money.

Option period is $1000 on homes here it seems...

I remember when my option was $200.

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Even at $5k I don't think that is worth risking having your house tied up for a week or more only to have to put it back on the market.

aggiederelict said:

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I got a wealthy patient who lives on Lake Austin and said the high end market is nuts. His buddy has $6 million in a property and someone from California offered him $20 million without even looking at the property in person.

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Would love to see the appraisal protest on that one

We ended up accepting an offer after 1st weekend on market.....got like 8 offers in total and 6 of them were over ask. Two of the people wrote personal letters to us as to why they wanted our house so much. Insanity.

I would take 5k a week.

Yeah, we accepted an offer over the weekend. All above ask, all from out of state.

Option period ends soon, hopefully everything works out.

The Silverback said:

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We ended up accepting an offer after 1st weekend on market.....got like 8 offers in total and 6 of them were over ask. Two of the people wrote personal letters to us as to why they wanted our house so much. Insanity.

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Were the letters from in town or out of towners?

The Silverback said:

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We ended up accepting an offer after 1st weekend on market.....got like 8 offers in total and 6 of them were over ask. Two of the people wrote personal letters to us as to why they wanted our house so much. Insanity.

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"It's insane how cheap your house is compared to where I'm from. I really would like to invest in your property and churn out cash in the coming years. Then I'll probably sell it to a developer to make room for an ugly modern apartment. please consider my offer."

/s

Aust Ag said:

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The Silverback said:

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We ended up accepting an offer after 1st weekend on market.....got like 8 offers in total and 6 of them were over ask. Two of the people wrote personal letters to us as to why they wanted our house so much. Insanity.

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Were the letters from in town or out of towners?

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Oddly enough both in town.....Spicewood and then somewhere in Central Austin. Still in awe of how much more we got than what we thought 2 months ago and especially last fall when we originally knew we were going to sell.

Friends listed a house in 78704 at $1MM. Selling for $1.5MM cash money, house is less than 1,600sf making it nearly $955/sf. Oh and they've lived there for about 10 months and paid less than $1MM for the house when they bought.

Not sure how many offers they got but buyer sounds like 30 something trust fund baby from H-town. No inspection, supposed to close in the next week or so and lease back for free until end of June. House is circa 1958 on a cul de sac with a cool view of the greenbelt (no house that you can see from their backyard) but that price is literally unreal to me. I'd call b.s. if I didn't have the text messages to prove it.

I wonder if the Army saw the trend in housing prices when they decided to put the Futures Command HQ in Austin.

They're going to be paying out some big $$$ in housing allowance for the soldiers assigned there.

Apparently the buyer's sister's family lives nearby. Uh, ok. I could show you a lot better uses for that $1.5MM but whatever...its their dough. But when you didn't work for that dough...

BAH took a significant and much needed jump 2 years ago, most likely due to Futures Command. It had a small adjustment last year. However, there really aren't a lot of people assigned to Futures Command, so it's not that big of a consideration in the grand scheme of things.

Close friend of mine is a CEO of a high tech firm who just announced their move to ATX. He said they couldn't gett people to move to California or DC, but with ATX they all were more than happy to sell their homes and move. Lots of people see it as an increase in pay (due to taxes) and lower costs of living. His Chief of Sales just bought a $4MM dollar home cash from selling his San Fran home.

More and more of this is coming to ATX, small companies are also about to feel the pressure from wages as finding labor who is willing to work versus tech careers is going to be hard to compete against.

I just hope it doesn't crash in the next 3-4 years. Our house is worth twice what we paid for it (new) in 2012. Other selling point bonuses are we must be in a protected grid, never lost power in storm, and the elementary school a block away is being rebuilt.

This neighborhood is getting more dense though. Many of the teardowns are being replaced by A/B units and some houses are not being torn down but a second house being added on the back of the property.

Potcake said:

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I just hope it doesn't crash in the next 3-4 years. Our house is worth twice what we paid for it (new) in 2012. Other selling point bonuses are we must be in a protected grid, never lost power in storm, and the elementary school a block away is being rebuilt.

This neighborhood is getting more dense though. Many of the teardowns are being replaced by A/B units and some houses are not being torn down but a second house being added on the back of the property.

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People are left with no choice other than to go A/B or even more dense with code changes. Small homes on bigger lots still cost $12,000+ a year in property taxes. The market value of the land itself is $550-600K for a lot in my area. To make it cost feasible you either have to build a giant home for someone who can easily afford a $1.8-2.0M+ home or build two small homes.

Wow

500,000ags said:

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Wow

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username checks out!

Howdy Dammit said:

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Damn! How much longer can this continue?