News and Events
November 10, 2008
5 Keys to finding housing bargains
It's increasingly obvious that real estate isn't a science, but that doesn't mean research can't turn up reliable indicators that a house is at a discount price.
Buying real estate right now isn't for sissies. Financing is a struggle, prices will almost surely keep dropping, and who knows what will happen to your job.
But if you have the money and can hang on to a home for five years or more, there's a huge inventory of properties priced at levels not seen since 2004.
"You could argue that everything is on sale today," says Amy Bohutinsky, a spokeswoman for Zillow.com, which offers online listings, research and home-value estimates.
The question for anyone brave enough to buy is: Can you ever really be confident you're getting a bargain?
Analysts at Redfin, an online discount
brokerage, think so. Crunching data from sales of 9,053 single-family houses in
But a good many sold for more than 10% below asking prices. Studying these sales, Redfin came up with a formula. The recipe includes some tactics that savvy buyers use instinctively and others that run counter to prevailing wisdom.
Of course, not everybody agrees that homes selling well below list price can be considered discounted. Maybe they were just overpriced, says Barry Nystedt, the president of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents.
"Home buying is not an exact science," Nystedt points out. "Discount," he says, "implies savings from actual value, as opposed to a price reduction from an unrealistic asking price."
