[jebartle]

The key word in my post was "might"....Just one example, house sold in Mira Mesa on the golf course, 3 bedroom/2bath, for less than $171,000, be hard to find that new...and I'm sure many examples showing prices have been raised to accomodate bond pay off....As you said, look at bottom line...

Originally Posted by katezbox

Just remember - you want to look at the true bottom line. many of the pre-owned we looked at with the bond paid off were marked up about $20K above those with an unpaid bond...

[Tbugs]

Before making an offer on a re-sale home, go to Zillow.com and look at their estimates. It also has the history of the sales of the house on it. Realtors hate this site because of the good information for sellers.

I did not find homes marked up because the bond is paid off or is very low. I sure cannot see paying a bond of $25,000 to $50,000 when there are so many great re-sales with much lower bonds or no bond.

The Zillow estimate is a good starting place to consider for a first offer to a seller. It is all about negotiation. Cannot do that on a new home.

[katezbox]

Originally Posted by Tbugs

Before making an offer on a re-sale home, go to Zillow.com and look at their estimates. It also has the history of the sales of the house on it. Realtors hate this site because of the good information for sellers.

I did not find homes marked up because the bond is paid off or is very low. I sure cannot see paying a bond of $25,000 to $50,000 when there are so many great re-sales with much lower bonds or no bond.

The Zillow estimate is a good starting place to consider for a first offer to a seller. It is all about negotiation. Cannot do that on a new home.

Tbugs,

You are right that you can't negotiate on a new home. But there are pros and cons to both approaches. When we moved here in 2009 we thought for sure that resales would be a better deal. In our case they weren't for the following reasons:

1. We wanted a certain model and there were very few on the resale market.

2. Of the resales for sale, many were an older "version" of this model which had a door to the lanai vs a slider - it made the home feel much more closed in.

3. The owners of the resales (rightfully) wanted to recover their sunk costs improvements they had made - however sometimes these improvements were of no value to us.

4. Many of the sellers had bought at the top of the market - so their prices were unrealistic.

5. Many of the resales had color combinations that we didn't care for.

6. TV was offering great deals on new homes. We were able to build exactly what we wanted - without paying for features we didn't want.

7. Mainly though, the bond is only one component of the cost that people seem to get hung up about. When evaluating new vs resale, it is the total cost that matters - not just one component.

8. Also bonds of about $50K are only for premiere homes. And bonds for courtyard villas are around $12K


Kate (the CPA on her soapbox...)