What do homebuyers have to do to get a house in this cutthroat real estate market? Offer sellers a Caribbean vacation? Bid $1 million over the asking price? Pay a competing bidder hundreds of thousands of dollars to walk away?
What about buying two homes just to live in one?
“You hear about buyers throwing sweeteners into the mix — wine, dinners — to get the house,” said Esty Perez, an agent with Knipe Realty in Portland, Oregon. “Then, along comes a buyer that is like, ‘Hold my beer.’ Let me take this up.”
Perez said one of his clients was in a bidding war on a $530,000 home, and offered $25,000 over the asking price.
The other top offer was only $15,000 over. But that buyer also threw in 10 Ether coins, which — in early May when Ethereum was trading at $3,900 — were worth nearly $40,000.
“We couldn’t beat that,” said Perez. “My client couldn’t offer any crypto to counter that. It was kind of laughable.”
Buying two houses to get one
Would you buy two homes just to get the one you really want? One buyer in Austin, Texas, did.
Competing against 50 other offers on the home, the buyer offered more than $100,000 above the asking price — all cash, according to Thomas Brown, agent with and founder of The Agency Texas, who represented the buyer who was moving to Austin from the San Francisco area. But that offer was matched by other buyers. So to seal the deal, Brown’s buyer offered something extra: to buy the seller’s next house.
Altogether the buyer paid $1 million for a $500,000 home, said Brown. “Buyers are coming here from living in $1 million condos and seeing they can buy a 3,000-square foot house for less. They’re saying ‘Even if I pay more, I’m only in for $1 million?’ “
Brown said his buyer was concerned that putting all the money toward the home they wanted would cause the property taxes to shoot up, so they preferred to put the extra money toward a new home for the seller and keep it a separate transaction.
The rest is here: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/homes/us-housing-market-offers/index.html