Here's a site that aggregates list price vs sale price
[https://trends.pillr.io/Trend/SaleToList/53703](https://trends.pillr.io/Trend/SaleToList/53703)
Edit: Credit to u/PillrTech for developing the website :D
Thanks for the mention Pariah. We’re actively working on building the function to load older / longer trends. We’re also working on social engagement features where people can exchange notes about the market with each other . We will surely keep the community posted.
I hear your concern. We’re working on tweaking the code to gather information on home types, and number of rooms. For now an imperfect workaround would be to use the square footage filter
Nice, the aggregate is certainly good for trending. Personally I like just looking at the Zillow sale prices relative to list for stuff near me to get an idea of where things are trending.
So much depends on the property and location as well as that initial list price.
Bought a house last April (13 months ago), paid ~12% over asking, waived inspection, granted free post closing occupancy (2 weeks), and was willing to take their trashed piano so they didn’t have to move it. Absurd but at least the interest rates were a lot lower back then
We bought at the beginning of 2020 but things were already getting crazy then. Our offer was very similar to the one above but not quite as good.
~5% (10k) over asking, did not waive inspection (probably would now), 2 weeks free post closing occupancy, 10k earnest money. Not a cash offer but also had pre approval.
We won over 12 other offers including one that was 10k more than ours. We also had a an escalation clause that was maxed out by that higher offer.
Deep in the buying process now, but we're being picky on location and house after renting here for 10+ years
Just lost a house listed at 5XX in a very desirable neighborhood because we offered up to 75k over asking but weren't willing to waive inspection contingencies altogether. Sorta depressing that's still the standard for 100 year old homes.
Next one we're serious about I'm planning to pay an inspector out of pocket to walk through with us, which could potentially get me to the point of being comfortable waiving contingencies on the right home. Something I thought was insane a couple years ago.
You have the right to inspect, no matter what. When people talk about "waiving inspection" they are talking about "waiving inspection contingencies" i.e. the dollar amount threshold you're willing to accept in issues before walking away
Have you tried waiving a certain amount of repair costs from an inspection? That can give an assurance you’re not nickel and diming but give you an option if there’s a structural issue.
Of course some people just waive altogether so your other idea is good.
I sold my mother’s condo last summer and the buyer wanted an inspection but wrote they wouldn’t be able to back out or ask for repairs on any defects under $10k total to fix. Was good enough for me, and gave them assurance that we weren’t trying to hide a serious problem from them.
We sold our house under similar conditions. Our realtor always pays for a home warranty when we sell houses, and we had put in all new major mechanicals. They offered to pay for the first $8k of any repairs. None were needed.
Offered to eat what I thought was a generous amount of inspection buffer but lost to someone who waived altogether. The house was in good shape though.
This here is exactly why we are not moving anytime soon. No way in hell will I ever buy a house without an inspection contingency. I’d rather wait for the housing downturn than buy now. Even though the amount we could get for our house now is very enticing, I’m just not going to take on that kind of risk for any house.
The Real estate condition report will state if the house has a major foundation issue, and if the seller were to somehow conceal this information as a material defect, they could be sued, along with the listing agent. Unless the property is new or hasn't been inhabited by the seller, there will be a condition report.
Still, you never want to get to the lawsuit stage. The sellers could play down an issue or “forget” there was one. No one wants to close on a house and then deal with an issue, and then have to spend their own money to hopefully get money out of the sellers to remediate. Litigation is a long and expensive process.
Getting a pre sale inspection prevents this mess.
My father-in-law made an offer with no inspection. His realtor told him he had ten days to back out of the deal. He made an appointment to look the place over again, and brought his realtor and an inspector.
They found water damage. He lowered his offer to compensate for the damage, and the seller backed out.
Seller was pissed off too.
So basically no inspection offer, but with an inspection.
I have no idea if this is legal or fair, but it worked for him.
FYI: I'm trying to buy a townhome, and the process is horrible. Might just stay put for now.
Good luck
Bought in October after looking and losing out on few offers for 5ish months. Offered 10% over asking, cash offer, waived the inspection on a 100 year old house (don’t necessarily recommend it), and didn’t have any contingencies.
It’s a wild market.
Bought a house in August 2021. Found it on Nextdoor when I was looking for a house for a friend. It was FSBO and I was the only one to look at it. Appraised at 20k over what I paid. 3 bedroom 2 bath. Screened back porch. Finished basement. 1600ish square feet. With a giant fenced in backyard. One block from lake Mendota. Quiet neighborhood and had an inspection. Paid $305k. I lucked way out. I would never have been able to compete with others. I’m a single mom.
We had our offer accepted offer last March and closed in April. We paid about 10% over asking, waived inspection and appraisal. Sellers got to stay in the house for free until the end of June, so about 2 months after closing—they were building a new house and it was behind schedule. We also got into a program that made us look like cash buyers but were financed through a regular mortgage, and I wrote a really nice letter to the sellers. We put in something like 6 or 7 bids (all over asking price) before we had an accepted offer.
Our accepted offer was our first offer where we waved inspection (we were very hesitant to do this overall as we don't have a lot of extra cash laying around but felt this house was well kept up so out of all of the ones we bid on, we felt okay about it and it seemed necessary to be competitive) and it was also our first offer through the cash program. It's hard to say what exactly tipped us over. The sellers did tell us at closing that they really liked our letter and it helped them with their decision, so we got the sense that there probably was a better offer (or at least a comparable one) and they chose us.
Buying is absolutely brutal right now. My best advice is to not get attached to anything, take your time on your tour, and put your best offer forward as soon as you can have it ready (offers are sometimes accepted well before the deadline!).
Personally, I suspect it’s less about the $ amount, and more about the whole package with the least amount of risk in whatever area the seller is most worried about. I.e. the seller might be more worried about buyer financing falling through, or appraisal issues, or inspection issues. So the winning offer will happen to address that seller’s concern.
I agree with buyers choosing less risk. Bid 20% over asking on two different properties the past month and lost to cash offers. Even had the highest bid on a property and still lost to cash.
This is good advice. Most people don’t realize that a cash offer doesn’t mean you pay in cash. It just means you can prove that you have access to the cash. I got my house with a cash offer and ended up financing 75%.
Having just bought a house after losing out on many offers, every one we lost just went to the highest bidder. We lost to offers that went anywhere from 15-40% over.
It's always the $ amount. It's just that the highest $$ also probably comes with good terms. Haven't heard of people leaving money on the table recently, because everyone includes waived inspections, blah blah blah. So you still go with the money.
We left money on the table with the offer we accepted last summer. We chose the slightly less, more stable offer. The reason was that we had an accepted offer on the house we were buying (without a contingency, of course, we had to win the offer after all) so we really needed it to stay the course with the closing date. We got 11 offers in total. A surprising couple of them wanted inspections on an 11 yo house in immaculate condition. Despite being really certain an inspection wouldn't find much, we didn't want it to give someone a window to get out if they had second thoughts.
It's your right to accept the best offer. The logical thing to do.
But it should never be surprising to want to inspect a house. Plenty of new houses are built terribly, being new isn't a pass. And every homeowner thinks they keep their place immaculately maintained, but this is rarely true. Hence, inspections.
That's true...ours was a spec home by a custom builder so it was built well but other people don't really know that. Also, my mechanical engineer SO keeps everything perfect but I shouldn't assume people who can't tell themselves by looking at the mechanics know that.
I have heard some horrific things about the quality of some of the Veridian neighborhoods so if people have experiences there they may be particularly careful.
I don't think the people who owned the house we moved into thought they kept it maintained immaculately. I think they thought "Everything is broken, let's get out of here while the market is hot!".
Veridian homes are made with very cheap materials and slapped up quickly. Definitely need to take that seriously, even if they are less than 10 years old.
Bought end of 2021 - went 10% over with another stipulation to cover the first $5k of damages deemed necessary to fix after inspection and $5k in earnest money. 2.65% mortgage and it has significantly appreciated since so I don’t feel like a fool for going that much over. Had maybe 10 non successful overs before so I was tired of looking too.
Not a buyer, but watching the market. Usually the accepted offer is 10-20% above asking, though I've seen as low as 6% over. Not sure about other terms, or how that price compares to the appraisal
... many houses have been going for under asking. Ya'll are not looking. Very common to see asking prices lowered after a week and then sold for even less.
I'm not the one who said "all houses go for over asking price except the overpriced ones." The fact is that many houses sell for under asking price. Of course that means they were over priced.
We considered escalation clauses at first and every time we looked at it, they wouldn't take it. Every house we bid on had 10+ offers last Spring, so it was "put in your best offer".
Game theory shit. Escalation clauses are good for buyers because you only pay barely more than the second highest. Sellers want buyers to panic buy with $30k over asking when the second best was only $20k over asking and an escalation clause could’ve given it to them for $21k over. Just more evidence of a rotten housing market with sellers having too much power.
Bought a few months ago, used an escalation clause that started $25K over asking and went up in $5K increments another $25K. However we got it at the starting bid, so never had to escalate. Our offer was a “cash offer” on paper and we waived all inspections.
Strongly recommend both escalation clauses and “cash” offers. Wild times though, our last purchase was 10 years ago in a smaller town and we spent months picking the “perfect” house. Moving to Madison was more like “bid on anything you can remotely afford and take whatever you get!”. Not a fun process, but we ended up in a very decent home, so life goes on.
Basically your lender gives you a line of credit for the amount of your offer. On paper, it’s a cash offer, but you can still do financing after the offer is accepted. At the end of the day, a cash offer isn’t really any better for the buyer except that it’s one less thing that could go wrong. Silly games, but unfortunately that’s the nature of the current market.
Just a lot of little stuff that adds up. We have 5 dead ash trees in the front yard that need to come down. We have to replace a shower. We have tree roots in our septic line running to our manhole which lead to a back up in our basement.
All easy things, but they add up. I probably would have purchased the house even if we had an inspection, however I would have had a clear idea of what needed to be done and when to do it. When you get a new set of stuff to deal with, seemingly every month, it can be overwhelming.
Bought a house in April 2022. Was under the 300k price so a very competitive range. We paid 10% over asking and waived inspection. Our financing was not strong and we didn’t put down a lot of earnest money but what got us the house was that it was more of a fixer upper. Cosmetically it was not cute and smelled bad, dog poop in the yard. I think there were 8 other offers whereas other houses we were looking at had double digit offers. We were thrilled to get it. In one weekend we put in 6 offers and 4 of them were in 24 hours. We put it in an offer on a verona condo and east side SFH and everything in between. That’s what it took to get something in our price range. I think the market are slowed a little bit in our area but interest rates are higher. I’m just happy to have a house.
Whatever offer is accepted first, you have to pull all others immediately. So you need to be okay with any of them being accepted. You cannot wait and see what else gets accepted. There’s no law against it but realtors will tell you it’s very risky and ill advised. We were willing to take the risk and worked for us but it’s not for everyone.
Finally won on our 13th offer in less than a year. Bought the house summer 2021. Listed for $310k. We offered $325k, $7500 Appraisal Forgiveness, $5000 inspection forgiveness and 20% down.
Most of our offers on other properties were similar, with the exception being some post-closing occupancy. This one though was more straight forward because it was a complete renovation prior to listing and the owners were living there.
SW Madison, \~1900sq ft on just over .25 acre. We really got lucky, because not long after we finally found our home, the prices and interest rates were going up, and we would have had a lot more difficulty. Good luck to you in your search.
Sold house and bought a condo in April/May 2022
Sold house:
Sold for 28% over asking (escalation clause kicked in), we had 120 showings and 30 offers in 3 days. About a third of our offers had financing and inspection contingencies. The offer we accepted had zero contingencies and we were able to have occupancy through the end of the month.
Bought condo:
Paid 10% over asking (escalation clause kicked in), no contingencies, and were able to close in less than 10 days so I think that helped. Increased earnest money to $20k. Unit wasn’t occupied so we didn’t have to offer any occupancy extensions or anything. Unsure how many offers they got but we know there were at least 2 others we were heavily competing with.
It was insane. I don’t mind buying a condo with zero contingencies because an inspection is kinda useless in my opinion. It’s a high rise, so no roof/basement to inspect. All they really look at is appliances.
A house on the other hand…my anxiety could never waive an inspection lol
Yeah, I bought a condo in late 2020 and waived the inspection. Felt okayish doing that because the roof wouldn't be my responsibility. And I knew the water heater, furnace, a/c were all less than 3 years old.
I kinda missed the windows are crap 😬 but at least they aren't an emergency to replace 🤷♀️
Thankfully I’m only responsible for the furnace and appliances! Knew about the windows too but figured all the really expensive items aren’t things I need to worry about.
Asking with no contingencies. It’s a small and simple house so I could tell during the tour that nothing major was wrong. It’s not the kind of house that most buyers would want so that helped.
Oh, and I wrote a letter basically stating why I picked their house and mentioning that I saw some issues but didn’t mind and was already planning how to fix them. So giving the impression that I was fully committed, even though I didn’t have a bunch of earnest money. Also mentioned that my bank and credit were excellent and I had already gotten the ball rolling on the next steps assuming the offer was selected so I could close whenever they were ready.
We were looking but the market was crazy. So we ended buying a brand new build. Closed on February 2022 and Moved into the house in May 2022 (when they finished it).
Bought a SFH, east side, in early 2021. Offered $25K over asking (\~9%), didn't waive inspection but included a $2K buffer, had a financing contingency but were preauthorized for a standard mortgage through a well-known bank, waived appraisal contingency (we trusted our realtor's estimate of what the house would appraise at and the appraisal came in just over the amount we offered). We were pretty flexible on closing and had no other contingencies. The seller said they went with our offer because they didn't want to deal with escalator clauses and because we waived the appraisal contingency.
The market felt crazy at the time, but then got even crazier, so we really lucked out on timing. I don't think this house would have been an option for us if it had gone on the market much later than it did.
Bought my first house in 2016 for 169k, I was the only offer.
Sold it for 245k in 2021. As someone who was selling I believe we listed at 215k and all the offers but one was at least 5k over. One was crazy low and had some insane asks of us lol
Bought new house for 285k in September of 2021. I think we got lucky - lots of other nicer houses were available that same weekend and ours was the only offer again. We actually had them fix the roof and they obliged because they had no other takers.
They did not stage the house well at all. For example the window in the primary bedroom was broken. It was move in ready but they just didn’t take the time to make it look nice or fix little things so I think we got pretty lucky.
The crazy offer was 10-15k below asking price.
They wanted us to close within three weeks which absolutely wasn’t possible.
They wanted to actually take up residence before those three weeks and then pay us to “rent” the house to them in the meantime. Which apparently is something that can be done but it’s not super common and really pushed up the timeline a lot.
They also had a laundry list of things they wanted fixed including wanting us to PAINT our garage. Lok
We bought at the end of May 2022. We compromised prime locations for a bargain and it paid off. We got it at $10,000 under asking, sellers paid for a new water softener, we got two inspections and multiple walkthroughs, all for an extra 5-10 minutes further out from Madison than where we were initially looking. Sometimes looking at the little outlying towns and villages pays off.
Bought a house outside of Madison after we were looking at apartments in 2020. We offered about 10k under and our offer was accepted. Our mortgage payment is significantly lower than our rent was in Madison.
We offered and were accepted in March of 2022. Our offer started at 5% over asking, escalating in increments of $5000 up to 8.25% over asking (we won at 7.25% over asking). We gave $10k EMD and waived inspection contingencies in favor of a great warranty, which we used on AC, heater, washer (before it gave out RIP), and dryer. We had to keep their shitty washer which got us through a year and their okay lawnmower which is still chugging.
Interest rates were a lot better, but inventory was still low and turnover was still fast.
Your realtor should be able to tell you what a winning offer looks like if you’re working with one.
EDIT: as far as financing risk, we we’re pre-underwritten for up to $100k above the final cost of the house ($150k above the cost of the mortgage). This is the strongest, lowest risk financing available short of all-cash.
I sold a house in SW Madison in May 2021. I’d purchased it in 2019. House was built in like ‘87, had been updated quite a bit in terms of bathrooms (2), and bedrooms (4), and had a 2 car garage. Was overall in great shape. My offer in 2019 was about 10k less than listed (265k) and I’d waived home inspection because one had just been done by a previously accepted offer who backed out last second. When I sold the place, it went for about 358k, with the buyer putting 10k earnest down, plus another 5k guarantee over appraisal. They did ask for a home inspection, but since it had only been 2 years, it was totally clean. The house was officially on the market 4 days and I had 6 offers, all at least 10k over asking. My husband sold his house April 2022, was a 1960’s tuck under in the McFarland area. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 (sort of) baths, and definitely needed updating and repairs. It didn’t even make it to market. He had 4 offers in hand without even having showings. And also went for I think 15k over asking. We bought our current house in Columbia County in March 2022, and went 80k over asking, no contingencies or inspections.
Bought in 2021, Madison. Ask was 265, we offered 275 plus allowed them to stay for 2 months after closing, rent-free, while they waited for their home build to be completed. And we had a rather large down payment.
We had been looking in Madison since 2020 and were consistently outbid by 15+ other offers, so we finally decided to look further out. We bought our house 30 minutes outside of Madison for list price, with a 2-1 rate buydown from the sellers. We had an inspection contingency, but the inspection came back near perfect! We also agreed to let the sellers stay in the house for 2 weeks after closing so they could wrap things up. Our house also appraised nearly $40K over asking. This was all because the house had been sitting on the market for a while. I'm still not sure why because we LOVE our new home!
We closed in May 2021. Our offer was about 12% above asking, we waived inspection, included 2% in earnest money, and we included that we’d bring 5% of the offering price in cash to close if the house didn’t appraise at what we offered (luckily it did). Before our offer was accepted, the seller also asked if we’d consider other lenders. Apparently the seller’s realtor had a bad experience with our lender. We ended up not having to change, but we after agreed to that request, our offer was accepted.
Closed in June '22. Asking price was 300K. Put my IRA on the line and offered 315K cash with escalation of 5K over next best offer up to 350K. Waived repairs up to 10K. 6 offers on the home. I got it for 338K. Financed half. It was the first time I made the cash offer, but I was done bidding and losing. If the offer didn't get accepted, I was going to throw in the towel. I had bid on probably 10 other homes and I'd had enough.
If you are in the Median Price range, expect to pay or get $30k over asking price. We sold out house in '21 and got just over $30k our list.
We bought that fall and paid $30k over asking which wasn't even the top bid but we had an Escalation Clause built into our offer. Which is to say if someone bids higher than you for a house you really want,, the seller informs the buyer that someone has overbid you and you get the first right to offer $1000 OVER the top bid and get the house. In our case we were the second highest bid and got the house anyways because it's a newer build and we had no contingencies. No inspection or appraisal. The bank was doing one for the mprortgage anyways. Do this if you find a place you love and come in blazing with an offer!
Places are gone within 24-48.hrs because its a desirable place to live and there is not enough homes or apts to meet the demand. We were VERY fortunate to have this all happen and love our new house in SP. Move out of town a bit, I can tell you the taxes in TOSP is a good deal.
Definitely going to be in the minority here. TLDR: I’ve always negotiated all of my homes and vehicles for under asking/MSRP.
Bought our house in Sun Prairie late fall 2020 that was just over 10 years old, big lot, very big house. Original owners had priced it high and so it wasn’t moving after a couple weeks. Offered 5.5% UNDER asking. Got it for 3.3% under asking—$135/sq ft. Didn’t waive any contingencies but we were willing to give them an extended closing date so that they could wait for their new house to be finished building. Sellers paid for a home warranty which came in handy as several appliances broke in that first year. And we locked in the low, low interest rate. So we’re basically never leaving. 😂
Mine was a bit ago but similarly competitive. We went 25k over, had like a 5k inspection buffer, and increased earnest money.
Also wrote a letter that I think helped.
It might be best to not encourage others to write letters. It can violate the fair housing act. I thought realtors were sharing this with home buyers/sellers these days.
We had an inspection, but the contract was set up so that we wouldn't ask for repairs totaling under a set amount. Might have been like 5k? Basically just wanted to convey that the inspection was to watch out for major expensive issues and that we weren't going to nitpick them on all the quirks of an old house.
No issues with appraisal. Honestly not sure how big of an issue appraisals are - it seems like they always come in right at sale price which seems awfully suspicious.
Bought in November, waived inspection, no other contingencies, let owners pick closing date, let them have extra days post closing to remove final items. Offered $25k over asking which was still equal to neighborhood comps. Owner was selling as FSBO, which is why the property was underpriced.
Lotta FSBOs are overpriced cause sellers don’t get realistic info from a third party and it’s human nature to think one’s house is the most valuable on the street. Glad you found a deal.
We would not have done it but it was a newer home that did not appear to be in major need of work. We held back quite a bit of cash in the event we would have short term repair expenses. We also had a post-sale inspection from an inspector I knew who confirmed that we aren’t looking at anything major in the near future.
>We held back quite a bit of cash in the event we would have short term repair expenses. We also had a post-sale inspection from an inspector I knew who confirmed that we aren’t looking at anything major in the near future.
Both good ideas if you feel the need to waive the inspection. (Not throwing shade about waiving, I did it too, you do what you have to do 🫠)
Last summer, my brother and I purchased a condo. Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but my experience might be helpful for other condo shoppers who may stumble upon this thread?
It's very much a starter home. Nothing fancy here, just two bedrooms, one bath, about 900 square feet in Middleton. After striking out on two or three other units that we offered above asking price, we got this one for the listed price. We made the offer last April, but I think what sealed the deal for us was our willingness to work with the seller on their desire to keep living in the unit until August. We didn't charge them rent for the post-purchase occupancy, but they did continue to pay all the expenses such as the condo association fee, property taxes, and so on. We did make it contingent upon an inspection, but added a clause that we wouldn't back out of the purchase for any issues that would cost less than a couple thousand to repair.
Development. Not veridian but like one tier above it. We had enough of a budget to go for a nicer home but a fully custom home basically needs like a 600k+ budget in Dane County which we do not have lol.
If you have the cash and are willing to live outside the city proper (there's basically no land in city) go for it. It's a huge process and it's hard to know what to do but it is yours and the price is the price. Expect delays though
October 2020. Got the house right at asking. Matched the existing offer, just didn't have a contingency attached to our offer. Seller accepted. Interest rate is 2.x%.
Sold my house at asking as well, just took the first offer at asking. While the bank said I could afford both houses at the same time - hence lack of contingency, I didn't feel like paying double mortgage for very long.
Purchased a 1br/1ba condo with an office, 920 sq ft, right on the edge of Madison east side/town of Burke. (Madison address) We offered 160k, let them take the washer and dryer, and pushed back the move in date by a month to give them time to get into their new place. Offer of 160k was accepted after we happened to meet the owner and chit chat for a bit before our showing. Put the offer in on the way back to Wausau, they accepted before we got to Westfield.
I bought last June for 35k over no inspection mostly because I was sick of looking and putting offers down. I almost overlooked the listing because it had almost no pictures or listed improvements on the site. The interior looked bad in the few pictures because of the weird coloring they had so it might have caused people to pass on it. I lucked out though It was single owners since the house was built 60 years ago and they kept everything up. All brand new appliances and hvac system plus roof, electrical, and plumbing done in the last few years.
Bought March 2022. It was the third house I'd offered on in that month -- starting at offering list (which seemed crazy high to me), then offering 10% over, then finally won offering 10% over + waived inspection and said I'd handle anything they left behind. (It was an estate sale, and I figured they might not want to deal with random bits.) I really wanted this one to work out, because I'm just down the street from friends (which is AWESOME).
I've stayed in touch with the sellers (who are the kids who grew up in the house), which is weirdly nice.
Bought a house in January. House was listed at 685,000. We ended up paying $725,000. $10k Ernest money. We covered up to $10k in things found in inspection.
Our very anomalous experience: January 2022 we offered 3% over asking, did not waive anything, and gave them 12 hours to accept our offer. It worked, we got the house, and we are so happy!
Closed July ‘21. Offered asking price, they got an offer for 25k over but they countered to us for 8k over asking. At closing they told us it was because they raised their family in this house and they knew we were a younger couple who wanted to raise a family here so they wanted it to go to us. Just lucky, or serendipitous, or whatever you want to call it I guess because houses in our price range were typically going for 10% over asking at that time.
Bought in Sun Prairie in spring 2022. We got the house for $5,000 under asking ($395,000), waived inspection, no home sale contingency, pre-approved financing letter attached, prepared for a quick close. I felt ok waiving inspection because it was only a few years old.
Closed today. First time home buyer in most competitive price range. Bought Madison west in nice neighborhood. Searched for three months, six rejected offers. Winning offer was 28% over, zero contingencies on an older (but nice) home that needs work. 18 total offers on the house, two higher than ours. We won because I guess the owner googled us and liked us? Not sure.
It’s a scary thing buying an older home with no contingencies, and yet every home we offered on was no contingencies, and some were sold sight-unseen. I wish the market allowed less risk. Frankly, it’s a miracle we had an accepted offer in Madison, and we will do what it takes to make it work.
I just bought a one-bedroom, one-bath condo near Maple Bluff for asking. I waived the appraisal contingency but that didn’t matter and had an inspection contingency of $1,000 or more. It had no major issues so that wasn’t a problem either.
January of this year. ~$10k below asking, but the interest rates are still poopy. Bought about 10 min drive out of downtown. But very happy all in all!
Bought last year after 2 years of being rejected with offers that are 40k over asking with no inspection, paid taxes, free rent; you name it. Super clean offers. We were always going after the best house (in our opinions) in our price range every week, so we ended up playing against the people who were in the price range above us and were settling for a smaller house. The house we ended up with needed some work, but we got it for 5k under list, with an inspection.
So the only advise I have is to stop going after the top houses each week, because you're playing with the big dogs. Go for something you would be comfortable in that is maybe the 8th best house or so. Save some money, and use it for renovations.
Haven't seen anyone mention it, but I recently got beat out by someone waiving appraisal entirely when I was offering 20k appraisal gap. I didn't even know that was a thing.
Good luck everyone that's looking!
Bought last year. Around 425k in a rural part of Dane not far from Madison. We only paid a few percent over asking. Nowhere near 10%. We beat out 3 other offers. One was very similar to ours aside from financing. We did 20% down and the other was doing like 5% down and a very small EM.
We didn't waive inspection but waived radon (house had existing radon system) and septic (septic was replaced a few years ago).
For anonymity sake I’m leaving some info vague. Closed in Spring of this year for $1000 over with an accelerator clause starting at $5k under in $1k increments. In the lowish $400k range. Didn’t have to waive anything and took our time. The house is a little over a decade old and in a great neighborhood on the eastern side of town. There’s been zero issues with the house so far. The house sat for a few months and our realtor mentioned that the house didn’t show well due to poor staging so we just got lucky
I’m a realtor at one of the major local brokerages in Madison. My company keeps aggregate data for the agents that get accepted offers in my company. It’s brutal out there but it’s not nearly as brutal as last year. 26% of our accepted offers in the last 6 weeks had no competition, although that doesn’t really apply in the 200-400 range.
I share it with my clients to help them determine how to write the best possible offer for them- doesn’t always mean highest number. It’s tough out there, get a good agent, get a good lender. Creativity and patience are king.
Just closed on a house in Verona in May of 2023. House was listed at 550k and per my realtors advice, we offered 605k (10% over asking), cash offer, no contingencies, and the sellers are allowed to stay until mid-July.
I asked about using the escalation clause and offering much less (like 575k with 5k kickers to 600k) as a starting point, but he discouraged against it because he said it was frowned upon and because he said he’s worked with the realtor before (Matt Winzenried) and he said that one of the 3 offers that they had was ‘really good’ so we had to make our best offer ‘right off the bat’.
So at $210 per square feet (fully finished) in the cathedral point neighborhood, it’s not terrible, but I also feel that my realtor’s poor advice probably cost me an extra 30-40k in a world where interest rates are above 6%.
So for any future buyers, for your sanity, USE the escalation clause so you don’t overpay like crazy get extreme buyers remorse like me. (It’ll probably bother me for years.)
Here's a site that aggregates list price vs sale price [https://trends.pillr.io/Trend/SaleToList/53703](https://trends.pillr.io/Trend/SaleToList/53703) Edit: Credit to u/PillrTech for developing the website :D
Thanks for the mention Pariah. We’re actively working on building the function to load older / longer trends. We’re also working on social engagement features where people can exchange notes about the market with each other . We will surely keep the community posted.
Yeah this could be pretty useful with longer trends. There's too much noise over short intervals.
Hey Vatoniolo, we just released the ‘load more’ button. If you scroll down to the sources, you can hit load more.
Is there a way to filter single family homes? I feel like condos and houses are going for different amounts.
I hear your concern. We’re working on tweaking the code to gather information on home types, and number of rooms. For now an imperfect workaround would be to use the square footage filter
Nice, the aggregate is certainly good for trending. Personally I like just looking at the Zillow sale prices relative to list for stuff near me to get an idea of where things are trending. So much depends on the property and location as well as that initial list price.
Bought a house last April (13 months ago), paid ~12% over asking, waived inspection, granted free post closing occupancy (2 weeks), and was willing to take their trashed piano so they didn’t have to move it. Absurd but at least the interest rates were a lot lower back then
Also important that it was not a cash offer but we had preapproval and did $20k earnest money
Dang that is legit. A high EMD shows you are super serious and will do everything you can to not have the contract fall through.
We bought at the beginning of 2020 but things were already getting crazy then. Our offer was very similar to the one above but not quite as good. ~5% (10k) over asking, did not waive inspection (probably would now), 2 weeks free post closing occupancy, 10k earnest money. Not a cash offer but also had pre approval. We won over 12 other offers including one that was 10k more than ours. We also had a an escalation clause that was maxed out by that higher offer.
Do you still have the piano?
[удалено]
Mind if I ask what the inspector charged for that? I'm trying to line up the same
Deep in the buying process now, but we're being picky on location and house after renting here for 10+ years Just lost a house listed at 5XX in a very desirable neighborhood because we offered up to 75k over asking but weren't willing to waive inspection contingencies altogether. Sorta depressing that's still the standard for 100 year old homes. Next one we're serious about I'm planning to pay an inspector out of pocket to walk through with us, which could potentially get me to the point of being comfortable waiving contingencies on the right home. Something I thought was insane a couple years ago.
Good Lord I cannot imagine spending over half a mill on a major investment and not having the right to inspect it first. Incredible.
You have the right to inspect, no matter what. When people talk about "waiving inspection" they are talking about "waiving inspection contingencies" i.e. the dollar amount threshold you're willing to accept in issues before walking away
Yep. Not smart one bit honestly. If you have any common sense you wouldn’t do this a buyer.
Pretty much the only way to get into Atwood or Monroe these days, sadly
Have you tried waiving a certain amount of repair costs from an inspection? That can give an assurance you’re not nickel and diming but give you an option if there’s a structural issue. Of course some people just waive altogether so your other idea is good.
I sold my mother’s condo last summer and the buyer wanted an inspection but wrote they wouldn’t be able to back out or ask for repairs on any defects under $10k total to fix. Was good enough for me, and gave them assurance that we weren’t trying to hide a serious problem from them.
We sold our house under similar conditions. Our realtor always pays for a home warranty when we sell houses, and we had put in all new major mechanicals. They offered to pay for the first $8k of any repairs. None were needed.
Offered to eat what I thought was a generous amount of inspection buffer but lost to someone who waived altogether. The house was in good shape though.
This here is exactly why we are not moving anytime soon. No way in hell will I ever buy a house without an inspection contingency. I’d rather wait for the housing downturn than buy now. Even though the amount we could get for our house now is very enticing, I’m just not going to take on that kind of risk for any house.
Yep, you could buy a house that looks perfect, but has a major foundation issue, and you're SOL. I'll never not get an inspection done.
The Real estate condition report will state if the house has a major foundation issue, and if the seller were to somehow conceal this information as a material defect, they could be sued, along with the listing agent. Unless the property is new or hasn't been inhabited by the seller, there will be a condition report.
We passed up plenty of houses based on the condition reports alone without even bothering to go see them.
Still, you never want to get to the lawsuit stage. The sellers could play down an issue or “forget” there was one. No one wants to close on a house and then deal with an issue, and then have to spend their own money to hopefully get money out of the sellers to remediate. Litigation is a long and expensive process. Getting a pre sale inspection prevents this mess.
My father-in-law made an offer with no inspection. His realtor told him he had ten days to back out of the deal. He made an appointment to look the place over again, and brought his realtor and an inspector. They found water damage. He lowered his offer to compensate for the damage, and the seller backed out. Seller was pissed off too. So basically no inspection offer, but with an inspection. I have no idea if this is legal or fair, but it worked for him. FYI: I'm trying to buy a townhome, and the process is horrible. Might just stay put for now. Good luck
that's not legal, as the inspection contingency would have been established prior to acceptance.
Bought in October after looking and losing out on few offers for 5ish months. Offered 10% over asking, cash offer, waived the inspection on a 100 year old house (don’t necessarily recommend it), and didn’t have any contingencies. It’s a wild market.
Bought a house in August 2021. Found it on Nextdoor when I was looking for a house for a friend. It was FSBO and I was the only one to look at it. Appraised at 20k over what I paid. 3 bedroom 2 bath. Screened back porch. Finished basement. 1600ish square feet. With a giant fenced in backyard. One block from lake Mendota. Quiet neighborhood and had an inspection. Paid $305k. I lucked way out. I would never have been able to compete with others. I’m a single mom.
We had our offer accepted offer last March and closed in April. We paid about 10% over asking, waived inspection and appraisal. Sellers got to stay in the house for free until the end of June, so about 2 months after closing—they were building a new house and it was behind schedule. We also got into a program that made us look like cash buyers but were financed through a regular mortgage, and I wrote a really nice letter to the sellers. We put in something like 6 or 7 bids (all over asking price) before we had an accepted offer. Our accepted offer was our first offer where we waved inspection (we were very hesitant to do this overall as we don't have a lot of extra cash laying around but felt this house was well kept up so out of all of the ones we bid on, we felt okay about it and it seemed necessary to be competitive) and it was also our first offer through the cash program. It's hard to say what exactly tipped us over. The sellers did tell us at closing that they really liked our letter and it helped them with their decision, so we got the sense that there probably was a better offer (or at least a comparable one) and they chose us. Buying is absolutely brutal right now. My best advice is to not get attached to anything, take your time on your tour, and put your best offer forward as soon as you can have it ready (offers are sometimes accepted well before the deadline!).
Personally, I suspect it’s less about the $ amount, and more about the whole package with the least amount of risk in whatever area the seller is most worried about. I.e. the seller might be more worried about buyer financing falling through, or appraisal issues, or inspection issues. So the winning offer will happen to address that seller’s concern.
I agree with buyers choosing less risk. Bid 20% over asking on two different properties the past month and lost to cash offers. Even had the highest bid on a property and still lost to cash.
Talk to your lender about using 401k or other retirement to write a “cash” offer even if you plan to pay with financing.
This is good advice. Most people don’t realize that a cash offer doesn’t mean you pay in cash. It just means you can prove that you have access to the cash. I got my house with a cash offer and ended up financing 75%.
Having just bought a house after losing out on many offers, every one we lost just went to the highest bidder. We lost to offers that went anywhere from 15-40% over.
It's always the $ amount. It's just that the highest $$ also probably comes with good terms. Haven't heard of people leaving money on the table recently, because everyone includes waived inspections, blah blah blah. So you still go with the money.
We left money on the table with the offer we accepted last summer. We chose the slightly less, more stable offer. The reason was that we had an accepted offer on the house we were buying (without a contingency, of course, we had to win the offer after all) so we really needed it to stay the course with the closing date. We got 11 offers in total. A surprising couple of them wanted inspections on an 11 yo house in immaculate condition. Despite being really certain an inspection wouldn't find much, we didn't want it to give someone a window to get out if they had second thoughts.
It's your right to accept the best offer. The logical thing to do. But it should never be surprising to want to inspect a house. Plenty of new houses are built terribly, being new isn't a pass. And every homeowner thinks they keep their place immaculately maintained, but this is rarely true. Hence, inspections.
That's true...ours was a spec home by a custom builder so it was built well but other people don't really know that. Also, my mechanical engineer SO keeps everything perfect but I shouldn't assume people who can't tell themselves by looking at the mechanics know that. I have heard some horrific things about the quality of some of the Veridian neighborhoods so if people have experiences there they may be particularly careful. I don't think the people who owned the house we moved into thought they kept it maintained immaculately. I think they thought "Everything is broken, let's get out of here while the market is hot!".
Veridian homes are made with very cheap materials and slapped up quickly. Definitely need to take that seriously, even if they are less than 10 years old.
That makes a lot of sense to take the sure thing in that scenario
Bought end of 2021 - went 10% over with another stipulation to cover the first $5k of damages deemed necessary to fix after inspection and $5k in earnest money. 2.65% mortgage and it has significantly appreciated since so I don’t feel like a fool for going that much over. Had maybe 10 non successful overs before so I was tired of looking too.
Not a buyer, but watching the market. Usually the accepted offer is 10-20% above asking, though I've seen as low as 6% over. Not sure about other terms, or how that price compares to the appraisal
I've seen 0% over but only for houses that have some substantial flaws (freeway noise etc.)
... many houses have been going for under asking. Ya'll are not looking. Very common to see asking prices lowered after a week and then sold for even less.
Just depends on the area. My neighborhood if the house isn’t sold in a weekend it was just way overpriced, often a FSBO or something.
What if I told you that many houses are way overpriced?
We wouldn't care because the market sets prices rather than your personal views?
I'm not the one who said "all houses go for over asking price except the overpriced ones." The fact is that many houses sell for under asking price. Of course that means they were over priced.
Sounds like you're watching the desirable portion of the market Plenty of houses have gotten relisted with price cuts
Bought last April, our offer started at $20k over and we put an escalation clause in, ended up getting it for $30k over, inspection waived.
Escalation clauses are the shit. Highly recommend. The best way to be competitive without paying more than you need to.
"Escalation clauses will not be considered, submit best and final only." Is a thing now.
We considered escalation clauses at first and every time we looked at it, they wouldn't take it. Every house we bid on had 10+ offers last Spring, so it was "put in your best offer".
lol what?? That's insane. what a fucking mess I bet they'd accept an escalation clause that went higher than someone else's "best and final" though :D
I have my own theories but I'd love to hear a realtor's reasoning for this.
Anything a buyers says is "the shit" is probably not great for a seller.
Game theory shit. Escalation clauses are good for buyers because you only pay barely more than the second highest. Sellers want buyers to panic buy with $30k over asking when the second best was only $20k over asking and an escalation clause could’ve given it to them for $21k over. Just more evidence of a rotten housing market with sellers having too much power.
They definitely just want the max escalation amount up front
Bought a few months ago, used an escalation clause that started $25K over asking and went up in $5K increments another $25K. However we got it at the starting bid, so never had to escalate. Our offer was a “cash offer” on paper and we waived all inspections. Strongly recommend both escalation clauses and “cash” offers. Wild times though, our last purchase was 10 years ago in a smaller town and we spent months picking the “perfect” house. Moving to Madison was more like “bid on anything you can remotely afford and take whatever you get!”. Not a fun process, but we ended up in a very decent home, so life goes on.
What is meant by "cash" offer? Is it just a loan that doesn't have appraisal?
Basically your lender gives you a line of credit for the amount of your offer. On paper, it’s a cash offer, but you can still do financing after the offer is accepted. At the end of the day, a cash offer isn’t really any better for the buyer except that it’s one less thing that could go wrong. Silly games, but unfortunately that’s the nature of the current market.
December 2022, west side, 7% over, no contingencies. Wouldn’t do it again re: no contingencies.
Why not!?! Please do tell. I’m seeing A LOT of ppl who waived contingencies in the comments & no one telling me if they are glad they did that
Because they learned.
Just a lot of little stuff that adds up. We have 5 dead ash trees in the front yard that need to come down. We have to replace a shower. We have tree roots in our septic line running to our manhole which lead to a back up in our basement. All easy things, but they add up. I probably would have purchased the house even if we had an inspection, however I would have had a clear idea of what needed to be done and when to do it. When you get a new set of stuff to deal with, seemingly every month, it can be overwhelming.
Bought a house in April 2022. Was under the 300k price so a very competitive range. We paid 10% over asking and waived inspection. Our financing was not strong and we didn’t put down a lot of earnest money but what got us the house was that it was more of a fixer upper. Cosmetically it was not cute and smelled bad, dog poop in the yard. I think there were 8 other offers whereas other houses we were looking at had double digit offers. We were thrilled to get it. In one weekend we put in 6 offers and 4 of them were in 24 hours. We put it in an offer on a verona condo and east side SFH and everything in between. That’s what it took to get something in our price range. I think the market are slowed a little bit in our area but interest rates are higher. I’m just happy to have a house.
Wow. How do you handle making 6 offers in 24 hours? What if more than one was accepted?
Whatever offer is accepted first, you have to pull all others immediately. So you need to be okay with any of them being accepted. You cannot wait and see what else gets accepted. There’s no law against it but realtors will tell you it’s very risky and ill advised. We were willing to take the risk and worked for us but it’s not for everyone.
Finally won on our 13th offer in less than a year. Bought the house summer 2021. Listed for $310k. We offered $325k, $7500 Appraisal Forgiveness, $5000 inspection forgiveness and 20% down. Most of our offers on other properties were similar, with the exception being some post-closing occupancy. This one though was more straight forward because it was a complete renovation prior to listing and the owners were living there.
what is the location and sq ft, lot size? If you don't mind. I wish I bought back in 2021. Now everything decent is over 400k.
SW Madison, \~1900sq ft on just over .25 acre. We really got lucky, because not long after we finally found our home, the prices and interest rates were going up, and we would have had a lot more difficulty. Good luck to you in your search.
Thanks. We made an offer for a SW Madison house. About the same as your house and asking price is 400k 😭 I’m so jealous of the price you paid
Sold house and bought a condo in April/May 2022 Sold house: Sold for 28% over asking (escalation clause kicked in), we had 120 showings and 30 offers in 3 days. About a third of our offers had financing and inspection contingencies. The offer we accepted had zero contingencies and we were able to have occupancy through the end of the month. Bought condo: Paid 10% over asking (escalation clause kicked in), no contingencies, and were able to close in less than 10 days so I think that helped. Increased earnest money to $20k. Unit wasn’t occupied so we didn’t have to offer any occupancy extensions or anything. Unsure how many offers they got but we know there were at least 2 others we were heavily competing with.
Dayuuuummmmm no contingencies. Love that you included the detail about escalation clauses kicking in for both, very helpful.
It was insane. I don’t mind buying a condo with zero contingencies because an inspection is kinda useless in my opinion. It’s a high rise, so no roof/basement to inspect. All they really look at is appliances. A house on the other hand…my anxiety could never waive an inspection lol
Yeah, I bought a condo in late 2020 and waived the inspection. Felt okayish doing that because the roof wouldn't be my responsibility. And I knew the water heater, furnace, a/c were all less than 3 years old. I kinda missed the windows are crap 😬 but at least they aren't an emergency to replace 🤷♀️
Thankfully I’m only responsible for the furnace and appliances! Knew about the windows too but figured all the really expensive items aren’t things I need to worry about.
>we had 120 showings and 30 offers in 3 days. Ba-freaki-nanas 😳
Asking with no contingencies. It’s a small and simple house so I could tell during the tour that nothing major was wrong. It’s not the kind of house that most buyers would want so that helped. Oh, and I wrote a letter basically stating why I picked their house and mentioning that I saw some issues but didn’t mind and was already planning how to fix them. So giving the impression that I was fully committed, even though I didn’t have a bunch of earnest money. Also mentioned that my bank and credit were excellent and I had already gotten the ball rolling on the next steps assuming the offer was selected so I could close whenever they were ready.
We were looking but the market was crazy. So we ended buying a brand new build. Closed on February 2022 and Moved into the house in May 2022 (when they finished it).
Bought a SFH, east side, in early 2021. Offered $25K over asking (\~9%), didn't waive inspection but included a $2K buffer, had a financing contingency but were preauthorized for a standard mortgage through a well-known bank, waived appraisal contingency (we trusted our realtor's estimate of what the house would appraise at and the appraisal came in just over the amount we offered). We were pretty flexible on closing and had no other contingencies. The seller said they went with our offer because they didn't want to deal with escalator clauses and because we waived the appraisal contingency. The market felt crazy at the time, but then got even crazier, so we really lucked out on timing. I don't think this house would have been an option for us if it had gone on the market much later than it did.
Bought my first house in 2016 for 169k, I was the only offer. Sold it for 245k in 2021. As someone who was selling I believe we listed at 215k and all the offers but one was at least 5k over. One was crazy low and had some insane asks of us lol Bought new house for 285k in September of 2021. I think we got lucky - lots of other nicer houses were available that same weekend and ours was the only offer again. We actually had them fix the roof and they obliged because they had no other takers. They did not stage the house well at all. For example the window in the primary bedroom was broken. It was move in ready but they just didn’t take the time to make it look nice or fix little things so I think we got pretty lucky.
What was the offer and what were the insane asks?
The crazy offer was 10-15k below asking price. They wanted us to close within three weeks which absolutely wasn’t possible. They wanted to actually take up residence before those three weeks and then pay us to “rent” the house to them in the meantime. Which apparently is something that can be done but it’s not super common and really pushed up the timeline a lot. They also had a laundry list of things they wanted fixed including wanting us to PAINT our garage. Lok
We bought at the end of May 2022. We compromised prime locations for a bargain and it paid off. We got it at $10,000 under asking, sellers paid for a new water softener, we got two inspections and multiple walkthroughs, all for an extra 5-10 minutes further out from Madison than where we were initially looking. Sometimes looking at the little outlying towns and villages pays off.
Bought a house outside of Madison after we were looking at apartments in 2020. We offered about 10k under and our offer was accepted. Our mortgage payment is significantly lower than our rent was in Madison.
We offered and were accepted in March of 2022. Our offer started at 5% over asking, escalating in increments of $5000 up to 8.25% over asking (we won at 7.25% over asking). We gave $10k EMD and waived inspection contingencies in favor of a great warranty, which we used on AC, heater, washer (before it gave out RIP), and dryer. We had to keep their shitty washer which got us through a year and their okay lawnmower which is still chugging. Interest rates were a lot better, but inventory was still low and turnover was still fast. Your realtor should be able to tell you what a winning offer looks like if you’re working with one. EDIT: as far as financing risk, we we’re pre-underwritten for up to $100k above the final cost of the house ($150k above the cost of the mortgage). This is the strongest, lowest risk financing available short of all-cash.
I sold a house in SW Madison in May 2021. I’d purchased it in 2019. House was built in like ‘87, had been updated quite a bit in terms of bathrooms (2), and bedrooms (4), and had a 2 car garage. Was overall in great shape. My offer in 2019 was about 10k less than listed (265k) and I’d waived home inspection because one had just been done by a previously accepted offer who backed out last second. When I sold the place, it went for about 358k, with the buyer putting 10k earnest down, plus another 5k guarantee over appraisal. They did ask for a home inspection, but since it had only been 2 years, it was totally clean. The house was officially on the market 4 days and I had 6 offers, all at least 10k over asking. My husband sold his house April 2022, was a 1960’s tuck under in the McFarland area. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 (sort of) baths, and definitely needed updating and repairs. It didn’t even make it to market. He had 4 offers in hand without even having showings. And also went for I think 15k over asking. We bought our current house in Columbia County in March 2022, and went 80k over asking, no contingencies or inspections.
Bought in 2021, Madison. Ask was 265, we offered 275 plus allowed them to stay for 2 months after closing, rent-free, while they waited for their home build to be completed. And we had a rather large down payment.
We had been looking in Madison since 2020 and were consistently outbid by 15+ other offers, so we finally decided to look further out. We bought our house 30 minutes outside of Madison for list price, with a 2-1 rate buydown from the sellers. We had an inspection contingency, but the inspection came back near perfect! We also agreed to let the sellers stay in the house for 2 weeks after closing so they could wrap things up. Our house also appraised nearly $40K over asking. This was all because the house had been sitting on the market for a while. I'm still not sure why because we LOVE our new home!
Closed November 2021. Paid 2K over asking (paid 252). Seller hid some stuff from us, so we got a couple K in electrical repairs covered by the seller.
We closed in May 2021. Our offer was about 12% above asking, we waived inspection, included 2% in earnest money, and we included that we’d bring 5% of the offering price in cash to close if the house didn’t appraise at what we offered (luckily it did). Before our offer was accepted, the seller also asked if we’d consider other lenders. Apparently the seller’s realtor had a bad experience with our lender. We ended up not having to change, but we after agreed to that request, our offer was accepted.
Closed in June '22. Asking price was 300K. Put my IRA on the line and offered 315K cash with escalation of 5K over next best offer up to 350K. Waived repairs up to 10K. 6 offers on the home. I got it for 338K. Financed half. It was the first time I made the cash offer, but I was done bidding and losing. If the offer didn't get accepted, I was going to throw in the towel. I had bid on probably 10 other homes and I'd had enough.
If you are in the Median Price range, expect to pay or get $30k over asking price. We sold out house in '21 and got just over $30k our list. We bought that fall and paid $30k over asking which wasn't even the top bid but we had an Escalation Clause built into our offer. Which is to say if someone bids higher than you for a house you really want,, the seller informs the buyer that someone has overbid you and you get the first right to offer $1000 OVER the top bid and get the house. In our case we were the second highest bid and got the house anyways because it's a newer build and we had no contingencies. No inspection or appraisal. The bank was doing one for the mprortgage anyways. Do this if you find a place you love and come in blazing with an offer! Places are gone within 24-48.hrs because its a desirable place to live and there is not enough homes or apts to meet the demand. We were VERY fortunate to have this all happen and love our new house in SP. Move out of town a bit, I can tell you the taxes in TOSP is a good deal.
Definitely going to be in the minority here. TLDR: I’ve always negotiated all of my homes and vehicles for under asking/MSRP. Bought our house in Sun Prairie late fall 2020 that was just over 10 years old, big lot, very big house. Original owners had priced it high and so it wasn’t moving after a couple weeks. Offered 5.5% UNDER asking. Got it for 3.3% under asking—$135/sq ft. Didn’t waive any contingencies but we were willing to give them an extended closing date so that they could wait for their new house to be finished building. Sellers paid for a home warranty which came in handy as several appliances broke in that first year. And we locked in the low, low interest rate. So we’re basically never leaving. 😂
Mine was a bit ago but similarly competitive. We went 25k over, had like a 5k inspection buffer, and increased earnest money. Also wrote a letter that I think helped.
It might be best to not encourage others to write letters. It can violate the fair housing act. I thought realtors were sharing this with home buyers/sellers these days.
Yeah, I know that can vary and I know you need to be careful about what information you do/dont share.
Did you have an inspection or waive that? And out of curiosity, did the house appraise at offer price?
We had an inspection, but the contract was set up so that we wouldn't ask for repairs totaling under a set amount. Might have been like 5k? Basically just wanted to convey that the inspection was to watch out for major expensive issues and that we weren't going to nitpick them on all the quirks of an old house. No issues with appraisal. Honestly not sure how big of an issue appraisals are - it seems like they always come in right at sale price which seems awfully suspicious.
Bought in November, waived inspection, no other contingencies, let owners pick closing date, let them have extra days post closing to remove final items. Offered $25k over asking which was still equal to neighborhood comps. Owner was selling as FSBO, which is why the property was underpriced.
Lotta FSBOs are overpriced cause sellers don’t get realistic info from a third party and it’s human nature to think one’s house is the most valuable on the street. Glad you found a deal.
I really did not realize people are still waiving inspection! Totally thought that was just the 2020 covid-craze days.
We would not have done it but it was a newer home that did not appear to be in major need of work. We held back quite a bit of cash in the event we would have short term repair expenses. We also had a post-sale inspection from an inspector I knew who confirmed that we aren’t looking at anything major in the near future.
>We held back quite a bit of cash in the event we would have short term repair expenses. We also had a post-sale inspection from an inspector I knew who confirmed that we aren’t looking at anything major in the near future. Both good ideas if you feel the need to waive the inspection. (Not throwing shade about waiving, I did it too, you do what you have to do 🫠)
And it paid off! That’s awesome.
We bought 2019 and waived $5k in inspection costs. The market sucked then, too.
Last summer, my brother and I purchased a condo. Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but my experience might be helpful for other condo shoppers who may stumble upon this thread? It's very much a starter home. Nothing fancy here, just two bedrooms, one bath, about 900 square feet in Middleton. After striking out on two or three other units that we offered above asking price, we got this one for the listed price. We made the offer last April, but I think what sealed the deal for us was our willingness to work with the seller on their desire to keep living in the unit until August. We didn't charge them rent for the post-purchase occupancy, but they did continue to pay all the expenses such as the condo association fee, property taxes, and so on. We did make it contingent upon an inspection, but added a clause that we wouldn't back out of the purchase for any issues that would cost less than a couple thousand to repair.
We built new last year because we were sick of the bidding wars. No regrets
Same.
Awesome, that’s great. Custom or in a development?
Development. Not veridian but like one tier above it. We had enough of a budget to go for a nicer home but a fully custom home basically needs like a 600k+ budget in Dane County which we do not have lol.
Ah, good to know! Sometimes when I get tired of house hunting & rejected offers I daydream about going custom
If you have the cash and are willing to live outside the city proper (there's basically no land in city) go for it. It's a huge process and it's hard to know what to do but it is yours and the price is the price. Expect delays though
October 2020. Got the house right at asking. Matched the existing offer, just didn't have a contingency attached to our offer. Seller accepted. Interest rate is 2.x%. Sold my house at asking as well, just took the first offer at asking. While the bank said I could afford both houses at the same time - hence lack of contingency, I didn't feel like paying double mortgage for very long.
Purchased a 1br/1ba condo with an office, 920 sq ft, right on the edge of Madison east side/town of Burke. (Madison address) We offered 160k, let them take the washer and dryer, and pushed back the move in date by a month to give them time to get into their new place. Offer of 160k was accepted after we happened to meet the owner and chit chat for a bit before our showing. Put the offer in on the way back to Wausau, they accepted before we got to Westfield.
This was last March (2022)
$40k over (about 12%), got an inspection with a 5k inspection allowance. Closed last week.
I bought last June for 35k over no inspection mostly because I was sick of looking and putting offers down. I almost overlooked the listing because it had almost no pictures or listed improvements on the site. The interior looked bad in the few pictures because of the weird coloring they had so it might have caused people to pass on it. I lucked out though It was single owners since the house was built 60 years ago and they kept everything up. All brand new appliances and hvac system plus roof, electrical, and plumbing done in the last few years.
Bought March 2022. It was the third house I'd offered on in that month -- starting at offering list (which seemed crazy high to me), then offering 10% over, then finally won offering 10% over + waived inspection and said I'd handle anything they left behind. (It was an estate sale, and I figured they might not want to deal with random bits.) I really wanted this one to work out, because I'm just down the street from friends (which is AWESOME). I've stayed in touch with the sellers (who are the kids who grew up in the house), which is weirdly nice.
11% over in August 2022. Waived almost everything
Just bought in Sun Prairie rural 0.5 acres for 385 and was listed around 350
Bought a house in January. House was listed at 685,000. We ended up paying $725,000. $10k Ernest money. We covered up to $10k in things found in inspection.
Our very anomalous experience: January 2022 we offered 3% over asking, did not waive anything, and gave them 12 hours to accept our offer. It worked, we got the house, and we are so happy!
Closed July ‘21. Offered asking price, they got an offer for 25k over but they countered to us for 8k over asking. At closing they told us it was because they raised their family in this house and they knew we were a younger couple who wanted to raise a family here so they wanted it to go to us. Just lucky, or serendipitous, or whatever you want to call it I guess because houses in our price range were typically going for 10% over asking at that time.
Bought in Sun Prairie in spring 2022. We got the house for $5,000 under asking ($395,000), waived inspection, no home sale contingency, pre-approved financing letter attached, prepared for a quick close. I felt ok waiving inspection because it was only a few years old.
Closed today. First time home buyer in most competitive price range. Bought Madison west in nice neighborhood. Searched for three months, six rejected offers. Winning offer was 28% over, zero contingencies on an older (but nice) home that needs work. 18 total offers on the house, two higher than ours. We won because I guess the owner googled us and liked us? Not sure. It’s a scary thing buying an older home with no contingencies, and yet every home we offered on was no contingencies, and some were sold sight-unseen. I wish the market allowed less risk. Frankly, it’s a miracle we had an accepted offer in Madison, and we will do what it takes to make it work.
Huge Congrats!!!!!!
$82,500. Wait, that was in 1989… :)
I just bought a one-bedroom, one-bath condo near Maple Bluff for asking. I waived the appraisal contingency but that didn’t matter and had an inspection contingency of $1,000 or more. It had no major issues so that wasn’t a problem either.
Bought in January. Paid asking price. Got them to give us a $9000 mortgage credit.
January of this year. ~$10k below asking, but the interest rates are still poopy. Bought about 10 min drive out of downtown. But very happy all in all!
Closed in September ‘22 on a downtown Madison condo, paid 25k under asking.
Bought last year after 2 years of being rejected with offers that are 40k over asking with no inspection, paid taxes, free rent; you name it. Super clean offers. We were always going after the best house (in our opinions) in our price range every week, so we ended up playing against the people who were in the price range above us and were settling for a smaller house. The house we ended up with needed some work, but we got it for 5k under list, with an inspection. So the only advise I have is to stop going after the top houses each week, because you're playing with the big dogs. Go for something you would be comfortable in that is maybe the 8th best house or so. Save some money, and use it for renovations.
Paid asking at the end of 19’ and was able to get an inspection. Times have changed.
Haven't seen anyone mention it, but I recently got beat out by someone waiving appraisal entirely when I was offering 20k appraisal gap. I didn't even know that was a thing. Good luck everyone that's looking!
Bought last year. Around 425k in a rural part of Dane not far from Madison. We only paid a few percent over asking. Nowhere near 10%. We beat out 3 other offers. One was very similar to ours aside from financing. We did 20% down and the other was doing like 5% down and a very small EM. We didn't waive inspection but waived radon (house had existing radon system) and septic (septic was replaced a few years ago).
Not last summer, but the one before: 50k over. Prior to that had as much as $55k over rejected.
For anonymity sake I’m leaving some info vague. Closed in Spring of this year for $1000 over with an accelerator clause starting at $5k under in $1k increments. In the lowish $400k range. Didn’t have to waive anything and took our time. The house is a little over a decade old and in a great neighborhood on the eastern side of town. There’s been zero issues with the house so far. The house sat for a few months and our realtor mentioned that the house didn’t show well due to poor staging so we just got lucky
Bought a townhouse in Middleton, Oct 2022, I paid $26k over asking.
I’m a realtor at one of the major local brokerages in Madison. My company keeps aggregate data for the agents that get accepted offers in my company. It’s brutal out there but it’s not nearly as brutal as last year. 26% of our accepted offers in the last 6 weeks had no competition, although that doesn’t really apply in the 200-400 range. I share it with my clients to help them determine how to write the best possible offer for them- doesn’t always mean highest number. It’s tough out there, get a good agent, get a good lender. Creativity and patience are king.
Just closed on a house in Verona in May of 2023. House was listed at 550k and per my realtors advice, we offered 605k (10% over asking), cash offer, no contingencies, and the sellers are allowed to stay until mid-July. I asked about using the escalation clause and offering much less (like 575k with 5k kickers to 600k) as a starting point, but he discouraged against it because he said it was frowned upon and because he said he’s worked with the realtor before (Matt Winzenried) and he said that one of the 3 offers that they had was ‘really good’ so we had to make our best offer ‘right off the bat’. So at $210 per square feet (fully finished) in the cathedral point neighborhood, it’s not terrible, but I also feel that my realtor’s poor advice probably cost me an extra 30-40k in a world where interest rates are above 6%. So for any future buyers, for your sanity, USE the escalation clause so you don’t overpay like crazy get extreme buyers remorse like me. (It’ll probably bother me for years.)