How Much Over Asking?

[purplepenguin7]

Hi all! I don’t normally post over here but I’ve seen a lot of home selling/buying posts here.

I’m mostly just curious, in your market, how much over asking would a house listed at $559,000 go for? Doesn’t have to be exact just roughly if you’ve been in the market recently.

Bonus if you in Northern, NJ or Rockland/westchester. .

[ktw]

We sold this year in Westchester, and our house sold for ask. I think it really has to do with how well it’s priced, and how high the demand is for the type of house at that price is. We did receive some over ask offers, and some under ask offers, but the eventual sale was for $100 over our original ask, $1100 over the price we lowered it to in order to drum up renewed interest once the first buyers walked.

[af1212]

I think this is too tricky to answer without information about comps. Is the asking price already inflated, how many similar houses are on the market, location, etc

[purplepenguin7]

ktw, thank you for sharing! Can I ask why you didn’t go with the highest offer on your sale? I’ve bought one house that was a new construction condo so there wasn’t much of a two sided sale transaction so this is all new (and overwhelming!) to me.

[scm1011]

I think it’s highly variable by market and pricing strategy. We priced in line with comps and went under contract today for 11% over asking. Boston adjacent city.

[purplepenguin7]

scm1011 , af1212 , assume it's priced in line with comps- average price, maybe a tiny below the market.


as a side note, my realtor basically to me not to look at comps. I am fairly annoyed with her to begin with and this was just another tick in the negative column. I was mostly curious because in the area we are looking things seems to range between 2-10% (more towards the lower side) over asking but my realtor is semi pushing us to go above that, with the idea that comps don't matter. 

*editing to add, the average over asking in this town is 3.2%

[Susie]

We're NY capital region.  We bought in May for +4.7%/+$20k over asking, and sold in June for +7.7%/+$25k.  

A few recent sales nearer to your price point in question, all in our town since mid-May:

* +6.1%, $631k sale price, closed 8/6/21
* +8.8%, $555k sale price, closed 8/6/21
* +4.0%, $520k sale price, closed 7/27/21
* -2.6%, $560k sale price, closed 7/16/21 (this one is in our neighborhood and had been on and off the market for months, they were asking too high)
* +11.3%, $640k sale price, closed 7/14/21
* +21.1%, $605k sale price, closed 6/18/21 (we toured this one, it was phenomenally updated)
* +15.8%, $520k sale price, closed 6/18/21
* Sold for asking of $519,900, closed 5/24/21
* +6.1%, $525k sale price, closed 5/18/21

So... basically it's impossible to generalize.  Depends so much on how houses are priced.

The theme we saw, though, if one could be observed, was that buyers fought hard over houses that were beautifully updated, and that's where you see those double digit percentages over asking.  Nobody wanted to bid on the ones that needed work, no matter how well they are priced.  I think right now when there are material shortages that make it really hard to renovate, especially on a schedule pre-move in, whatever market there is for buyers who want to build sweat equity is pretty slack. 

[purplepenguin7]

Susie , thanks for breaking all that down. very helpful!

[brooklyn]

I’m in NNJ and paid $30k over asking last September on a $820k house.

In our neighborhood now, houses are going 70-150k over asking in the $800-1mil price range.

My realtor told me last month that our house could probably go for a million in this market now, which is crazy. We’re in a town with almost no inventory right now though.

[expectantsteelerfan]

In my PA market, things that go over asking are tending to go only $5000 over asking in general now (major slowdown since the spring), but well priced stuff is more often going right at asking, and things that start high are sitting and having to do a price reduction.

[mommin]

5% over is fairly common here in that range right now but our median sale price is about $515k so at that price you will have a fair number of buyers. Where we just moved from the houses $500k and up aren’t selling for much over asking but the median sale price there is $330k. The pool of buyers at $600k is pretty small so you won’t get much, if anything, over asking unless it’s a really amazing house.

[ktw]

Aug 13, 2021 13:55:25 GMT -5 purplepenguin7 said:

ktw, thank you for sharing! Can I ask why you didn’t go with the highest offer on your sale? I’ve bought one house that was a new construction condo so there wasn’t much of a two sided sale transaction so this is all new (and overwhelming!) to me.

All told, we accepted 4 offers on the house. Only the last one made it to contract and eventual sale. The first two were over ask, but the first buyers walked after their inspector claimed we had mold in the basement (we didn’t). The second buyers walked after inspection because our taxes were too low and they were afraid they might go up, or at least that’s what they told us. The third buyers were a little under ask, and made the unreasonable request that we replace our working septic system because their septic inspector thought it might fail one day (never mind that it passed his inspection, as well as the inspection of the two previous buyers’ inspectors). Unfortunately for them, our eventual buyers made us an offer the same weekend they requested that, and we went with them instead.

Basically, it’s just a story of how volatile the market was (is?). Our realtor told us that despite the fact that he’s making tons of money, he actually hates when the market goes crazy like this. People make offers they can’t (or don’t want to) afford, and then get spooked. At the time we sold, he said 3,4,5 or more accepted offers and inspections wasn’t uncommon at all.

[mommin]

Re. The comps don’t matter thing. I think it depends on how fast your market is inflating. It could be that the comp sales don’t matter now because their offers were put in a month or more before they closed so those prices may not be a reality now. Our area is going quickly and prices are still going up so, while comps matter, it may not be a perfect reflection of what your house would be worth in 30 days when you close

[k3am]

We sold our house in 2018 for 17% over asking and bought this one for 29% over asking..in the current market, houses are going for 20% above list.

But we are Bay Area and our housing market is dumb.

[steph2008]

I'm in central NJ. We just closed on a house in July. We lost on houses that we went 40k and 50k over. We got a house at 65k over, but then they didn't sell it (took it off the market). We ended up buying FSBO so we didn't go "over" bc we negotiated a price together, but things seem to be closing about 40 over at that price range around here. If it's VERY well done, more. For example, the one we LOVED and went 50k over closed yesterday at 76,250 0ver. We were looking slightly less than that price, but not much less.

[purplepenguin7]

Thanks all for sharing! ktw, I almost got into that same situation today as a buyer. We ultimately decided not to put in an offer because we thought we’d be in over our heads but my realtor was like, well you can always back out if you change your mind. I did not want to do that to the sellers though.

mommin, what you said (about comps) makes sense but that wasn’t exactly her reasoning. She basically said, it doesn’t matter if house A is 500k, house B is 650k, or that other houses went over 2-3%, but if you really want the house to just offer the literal highest you can regardless of list price.

[steph2008]

Aug 13, 2021 22:23:23 GMT -5 purplepenguin7 said:

mommin , what you said (about comps) makes sense but that wasn’t exactly her reasoning. She basically said, it doesn’t matter if house A is 500k, house B is 650k, or that other houses went over 2-3%, but if you really want the house to just offer the literal highest you can regardless of list price.

It's so sad but true, this is where we ended up... we had a range we wanted our mortgage to be in so I'd run each listing on the mortgage calculator and see how high we could go and stay in that range. We were looking from late Feb-April (found our FSBO mid-April) and the market here (northern Monmouth County) was INSANE. It has def slowed down now... 

I also think it truly depends who you end up in a bidding war with. For example, a house the same model as the one we bought, same area, and not as nice sold last week for 40k higher than most are selling at. It's NOT a nicer house- they must have just gotten someone willing to really go high... bc in total that house went 70k over at a 515 listing price.