Selling in Silicon Valley - Want to come along for the wild ride?

[2017SoFarSoGood]

I'm prepping my house for sale in Silicon Valley, California - just south of San Francisco. The property market is completely insane. It is astonishing who can actually pay these prices - especially when you realize that most purchases are cash. That's right, cash. With no contingencies and no chain.

Will be chronicling the madness of this sale here. I will then be purchasing a smaller (cheaper we hope) property nearer to SF. They say 'good luck with that. Feel free to join in, or simply ignore. Should be very interesting.

OMG that was amazingly fast! Congrats

The market in London is very slow, not to mention hyper inflated IMO. I want to drop our asking price but DH and agent said give it time, we've only been on a week. I am very impatient!

Good luck now with finding the new home. That's exciting...and we're here to help if you want to share any 'maybes'

Now now Bore save some of that lovely effective WOO for the next bit. Please. The purchase. Eek.

We shall try hard to not look over the 21 days until we have cash in hand. Otherwise we are in a lesser position. The one house we liked (DH loved) revealed a ton of flaws in the disclosures. Three pages! Let's see if the offers really do pour in as predicted after that.

Oh the sweet relief. What a difference a day makes

Biggest lesson in this whole thing has been that the power really IS in the relationship.

Our agent has been around a long time, and is very well respected. Everyone knows her. Turns out our buyer is using a mortgage broker who is a 'good friend' of our realtor, and she called to say our buyers are golden and moved the appraisal process through to this morning, when it should have taken at least a week to set up. Pretty amazing.

Two homes we've been interested in, she has known the agents and got us previews of the disclosures. It is amazing how many of the homes that look great are actually just wearing a lot of nice make up. So much work needed, all covered up with pretty paint. We are now thinking we may need to take a contractor friend with us if we seriously want to move on anything.

Anything going on at your end Pretty - are you doing weekend open house?

whats the latest op?

Well all week with the sale. 9 days til close of escrow. The dreadful staging materials will be picked up tomorrow. That gets a yippee from us all!

The (possibly) terrible news. I've gone and fallen in love! Against all advice I've found a house i want. Area is perfect. Walkable to transport and 35 minutes to work. Enough space. Good condition. The agent appears to be about of a flake and is being strange about offers. Was meant to be Friday but then house was open Saturday and Sunday.

Our agent and DH are meeting there at noon for a final look see. She tells us we can make an offer, with closing concurrent for both houses.

So the dilemma. Will the agent accept someone else's offer before seeing ours? Will our price be right?

So scary.

Tempting fate but here's the house

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/89-Wilshire-Ave-Daly-City-CA-94015/15457096_zpid/

That's very different to the one you just sold!

Love it OP. Looks very light and airy.

Oh that's lovely! I could be very happy there.

Will sprinkle a bit more woo-dust for luck

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fingers crossed :)

beautiful woo Bore

So the seller's agent (tricky dude) is 'intimating' to mine that an offer is coming in $100k over asking. Much as I want to play, I've said then we're not making an offer. Let's see if he is playing chicken.

Oh I hope he is playing chicken!

Nope. Sale pending and not to us. I'm quite sad.

Onwards and upwards. After I mope a while.

Aww that was a lovely house. Never mind! How is your beautiful cat?

The cat is happy right noe. Has laid claim to the fake dining chairs which are leaving tomorrow. She'll probably have about of a for when she realizes this house is going to be really quite empty. Poor kitty. Then she has to get ready for a move somewhere. Ah well. She's only five. Not quite an old crotchety kitty yet 😝

What happens to all the fake furniture when you sell? Do those house staging people just shunt it from house to house?

I LOVE the first house you linked to, all that wood! Beautiful. I love that style of house.

I'm guessing the stagers have a storage place that holds all their stuff which they trot out to all the houses as needed. Lots of it has the labels on, so it is not used much. Most staged hiomes also appear to be empty. It must be unusual to have to live in it, I think. We have not sat at the table, on the couch or on the bed other than our own dressed one. Yuck. The cat appears to enjoy manky.

Not sure which house I linked first but I'm sure it has long gone to new owners. Please let our new home be waiting out there. Staged or not!.

Yippee, the stagers have been and removed all that tat from our (someone's) house. DH says it is all echoing loudly but is very lovely.

It is quite amazing how quickly we have disassociated from what was our much loved home of 15 years. It is not now; now we are just waiting to move. Interesting and quite refreshing to see how easy it actually is to make change happen. In some ways. Not discounting the horrible stress mind you. It will be so much easier to continue to pack up now that there is so much empty space. The garage is full of things, including all of our DS’s toys (he is 37) augmented greatly by additions for DGS’s. Perhaps we shall need to cull some more – we shall see. Hate to do so if we move somewhere with adequate storage. Just for a few more years 

Here’s another house we saw a couple of weeks ago. Lovely location, very easy for commute, enough space. However, inspections revealed some kind of black beetle, or boring beetle – whatever it was DH said run for the hills. I still quite like it. I bet we’d get it for less than a 100k over too!

beetle house

I do like this thread, but it makes me a bit sad. I lived at 20th and Folsom for a very happy two years. It's unbelievable what's happened to prices there in the 11 years since I left. Good luck with the house hunt. If you can get your head around $1M+ in Daly City you're a better man than me!

Have some woo.

I've just sat and read the whole thread, I love Californian houses, they fascinate me. The view from yours is truly stunning. Not even slightly jealous as I sit here looking at the house and garage only a few feet from my front garden. .. I like the look of the first house you looked at, second one seemed a bit too much dark wood for my liking, and black beetles? Bleurgh. I'm with your dh on that one. Good luck Op, hope you find your perfect house soon. We're selling up next year and it's such a stressful and scary thought, just hope we can find a home we love as much as this one.

Well despite black beetles they got 12 offers - yes, 12! - above asking so it is off the list too.

I'm worried that the speed DH moves at (slightly south of glacial) is going to hamper us here. However he perfectly counteracts my tendency to jump all in, so maybe it's a good thing. We talked about it and agree this is time to be fully engaged and open, and to speak up fast. No deferring or being sweet and nice here.

It is glorious to have an empty house. Wow. All that gleaming expanse of wood floor. The light. Space. The echo is a tad deafening but small price to pay. Kitty appears to enjoy all of this change. Weird cat just selects a new spot and claims it. Glad she is going with the flow so far.

DGS is utterly delighted that we did not sell his good friend, Dog. Despite him being featured sitting in the crib in 'the nursery' pictures, he is safe. Phew. 😝 another stuffed toy saved today.

CheeseBadger none of us could afford your old hood these days. Prime real estate. As to fighting to buy in Daly City. It defies reason! Never ever imagined we could be in this situation.

Just made appointment for new owners do to walk through with us Monday evening, prior to us becoming 'renters' or perhaps more accurately guests, since we don't have to pay, other than a refundable $2,000 payment.

This feels awfully real. I am a wee bit sad. When I look at what I'm giving up - and what I'm probably going to end up with - it seems like an awful big difference. Have to keep reminding myself of the things that you can't see when you look at a house:

No more mortgage AND commute cut at least in half.

That's what I have to think about. We currently pay $3400 a month mortgage so all of that will be saved to allow for earlier retirement. The commute should go from almost 4 hours a day to no more than 2 hours. It ill be worth it in the end. I hope.

got a bit of seller's remorse here

And it is done. The sale is completed. We are now renters in our old home (!) for the next 30 days. We met the new owners (our landlords) and they look like they are about 11 or 12 years old. Literally. Teenagers at most. How is it possible they are able to afford this at this time in their lives? It is truly an enigma. I thought we were doing rather well.

For one moment we are comparatively rich, but are actively planning to make an offer for a house that will result in us netting very little, after taxes. Being a buyer in this climate is even more scary than being a seller. For one rather modest home here I could buy 5 or 6 in my home town. Nice ones at that.

This crazy tech wave has literally turned the world upside down around here.

What do we think of this one? perhaps?

Glad it's all gone through!

I like all the houses because they are so different from here, but I do not like the decor in that one - I guess it has been 'dressed'?

But could be lovely with a bit of redecorating.