Rochester Real Estate

As a nice follow-up to an earlier article I wrote on the myopic reports of housing bubble bursts approaching, the local Rochester regional paper is reporting strong housing sales in the city of Rochester - even trending against slowing sales in the 11-county region of Western New York. Sales are up 9% over last year's record pace.

Keep in mind, this is an increase over the already high sales numbers from last year. It appears that my predictions were right (and the predictions that actually focused on most of America for CNN). In fact, Rochester is exceeding those numbers so far.

It's not particularly surpising given that interest rates continue to be historically low. The local economy appears to be on the uptrend, so sales should continue to be pretty hot. Suburban sales are slumping a little from last year - mainly because suburban homes are - and have been - priced reasonably well, not significantly undervalued.

The city is still priced quite well below national averages and under their true natural values. Crime and a stagnant economy held prices down in the bargain basement level for much of the city. Given the recent change in city administration, tehre's a palpable feeling of optimism for the city. The sales seem to be a good indicator that the optimism isn't shallow but is being backed up by actual investment by residents. I can only see high sales continuing for the short term - perhaps not at the current record pace, but certainly above the regional and historical rate. The only complications I see are:

• The increasing number of upscale luxury apartments - Corn Hill Landing, The Temple Building, and the East Ave apartment complexes. There's been a marked increase of upscale apartments in the city and even closer to downtown. Apparently there's been a pent-up demand though because these complexes are doing a good job of getting tenants. This is something that's been a bit baffling to me - Rochester has a dead downtown and a very hard time retaining 18-30 yr olds. So who is moving into these complexes?
• The increase of housing supply. The report didn't break down listings by city/region, but supply seems to be overtaking demand. Interestingly, the median and average home price continue trending up.

I think both fore-tell that sooner or later the simple laws of supply and demand will kick in and housing prices will stand still again. But I'd say that the city will outsell and outpace the region and the house prices we see today are still below true market value. If crime takes a significant drop or the economy really takes off locally, we'll see prices rise regardless of regional supply issues.

Buying a Home

My fiancee and I have (almost) finished the process of buying our first home. I found the process to be long, frustrating and at times emotionally difficult. This article is meant to show what we went through, lessons learned, and hopefully steer others away from some of the troubles we had.

The most important step: Finding a Good Agent

The most important part of the house-buying process is finding the right buyer's agent. A good agent will help you in a number of ways:

• Keeping you up to date with property listings matching your criteria (often before the listinsg are available to the general public online).
• Keeping your spirits up during the house walkthroughs (more on this below)
• Gently dissuading you from buying a sub-par property
• Knowing the ins and outs of negotiating with the seller's agent
• Knowing the neighborhoods with regards to crime and whether the trend is good or bad
• Being able to give a good rough estimate as to a house's true worth
• Generally looking out for your interests
• Coordinating the sale with the bank, your attorney, and the seller's agent

We met our agent during an open house in the city. He sensed that we were just beginning and didn't have a lot of experience yet and that we weren't quite sure what we wanted. He offered to show us properties and keep us up to date, but we declined and we went our separate ways. After trying it ourselves for a while we quickly came to the conclusion that we should give him a shot. It was the best move we made.

For those of you local to Rochester, we used Mark Siwiec. We were wary of agents, because a truly bad one can just chase the dollars and not work too hard at negotiating the sale price - after all, the agent makes a percentage of the sale. Mark is not just a good agent, he is great. He's polite, patient, helpful, intelligent and when need be: very aggressive. He always had our best interests in mind, and I reccomend him to buyer's and seller's alike without apprehension.

Bad Agents Abound

In the short time that we tried it alone, we continued to attend open houses and call the listing agents for properties that we wanted to see. We quickly learned an important lesson here: half of all the listing agents won't even return your phone calls. I still can't get over this. The agent's job is to sell the house and they will not even return your call.

We took about 4 months to find a house we wanted to buy. During that time and during negotations we found a number of bad agents. We met agents who would show up late, agents who never showed up. Agents who exclusively dealt with properties in such poor condition and disrepair that they should be condemned. For the first house we bid on, the agent intentionally took 2 days longer than the due date in the offer. Why is this bad? He was fishing for another bid so that we'd have to compete and drive up the price.

On the house we just closed on, the agent convinced the seller to replace the faulty furnaces with another set of used furnaces, because our contigency said to replace them, but did not say the word new explicitly. (Read more on our ordeal below.) The agent also lied to us a number of times in person.

My aunt's agent had the gall to ask her to give a private loan to the buyers of her house for the downpayment, despite knowing that she was in need of the money, and that no bank would lend them money.

Needless to say, the real estate industry is filled with very bad agents - from incompetent to unethical. Take your time and ask around to find a good agent for yourself.

Finding a house

What is your idea of a dream home?

The first thing you need to do when buying a house is to start narrowing down the characteristics of your dream home. Since we're young and can afford to, my fiancee and I decided to try to buy a rental property and become owner-occupants. This helped us narrow down the number of houses significantly - only multi-family, and only in a particular section of the city. We needed to have city property if we wanted to be able to get renters, and we knew enough about the city to know which neighborhoods we'd feel safe in and be able to find renters.

Aim high and go down from there. Be as specific as possible. How many square feet? What suburb/neighborhood? How many bedrooms and bathrooms? Do you like old house charm, or newer houses? Fireplaces? Garages?
And remember, there are plenty of houses, don't settle for one you are not in love with. You will eventually find it. Chances are you may find many dream houses.

Price

Price also played a large role. We initially started out looking for houses much cheaper than we ended up going after. This was a big mistake and large waste of time. The market will divide itself into various price points naturally. Talk with your mortgage broker and real estate agent extensively about your finances. I am on the cheap side, so I naturally wanted a cheaper house. You get what you pay for. If you're wary of buying a house and are frugal like me, consider just how much house you can really afford. If you really can afford a $200k house, then look in that price range, not $150k. In Rochester, there is a significant and natural price boundary around $200k. We spent months looking at houses in the $150-180k range. After moving to the $200k+ range - the quality of house, size, quality of neighborhood, and parking options were significantly different.

Obviously if you are the type who tends to have troubles with debt, or tends to overspend fight that urge as well.

What Can go Wrong

So you found a good agent, you've got a property you love and it's in your price range. What could go wrong? A lot.

Always make any offer on a house contingent on at least three things: your lawyer's approval, a walkthrough 24-48 hours before closing, and upon an engineer's inspection. I'll offer up some examples of why we need these things, directly from my experience.

Our mortgage broker told me that she forgot to schedule her walkthrough as a contingency. The lovely oak doors she saw? They were smashed in by the ex-husband (whose house was being sold after the divorce). She had no recourse.

Another aunt of mine recently purchased a house. The owner had actually removed all the nice trim and doors before the house was shown, only to sell it in a garage sale after accepting a bid!

Personal Experience

We found our house, negotiated a price and had it contingent on the three items above. We had a home inspection, chimney inspection and furnace inspection. The property was listed in "perfect condition." Our inspections turned up two furnaces with heat exchangers that wer cracked, two faulty electrical panels, and a need for a new roof - a tear-off. We negotiated for the seller to replace the furnaces and electrical panels. Unfortunately between that time and teh final walkthrough the seller's agent had manged to talk his client into going the cheap, less ethical route and replace the furnaces with another set of used furnaces.

The important thing was not to panic. We still wanted the house, but we had to fight very, very hard to get the seller and his agent to do the right thing. They eventually conceded to a new inspection of the replacement furnaces. They actually wouldn't even work and were rusty and missing parts. The seller's finally conceded us new furnaces with warranties.

What Not to Do

• Don't panic over anything. It can ruin your working relationship with the agents or attorneys. It may seem like a very big deal now, but you need to stay calm.
• If something looks bad, question it. Don;t cave in to aggressive or underhanded sellers. Make them fulfill their contractual obligations.
• Don't get upset if the seller doesn't budge on the price, or a competing bid wins. Yes, it was your dream house. But there's plenty of houses out there and lots of time. A house will likely be the largest purchase of your life. Don't rush into it.