Forget about living on the water, I’ve had an epiphany!

[HangOutdoors]

@Ronnie With everything going on and all the chaos, if you do get a home on the water in Discovery Bay that has an extra room, can I come live with you and bring my boat I will pay rent and cook if desired. Year round boating sounds pretty darn good right now.

 

[Ronnie]

Sorry @HangOutdoors , but regardless of where we move to rooms two and three are spoken for. My says we have to leave one open for guests/our son/or my mom. The other will be her or our office.

I want to live in Florida next to @Murf'n'surf. S Cal may have year round boating but N Cal does not, at least not the kind our boats were built for. My wife would never agree so it’s more of a fantasy than a dream.

 

[HangOutdoors]

@Ronnie Discovery Bay Looked pretty cool, imho.

 

[Ronnie]

Update on this adventure. We went to 5 open house showings today. Saw some really nice homes, some on the lake shore but the best ones were off the water.

I stopped by the marina Office to ask about birth and dry stack costs. Just under $300 per month for each. I need to get on the wait list, probably long ones, for both. If I get one I will have to keep the boat there all year or I will lose my spot. This complicates things, I will have to tow, launch, recover and re tow if I go with covered storage. If I got a berth, I’d add my own lift to it if they would let me.

unles I got a house off the water with storage space for my boat I will have to store it nearby at another facility, I don’t yet know what that will cost or if there is a wait list for it.

 

[RobbieO]

Update on this adventure. We went to 5 open house showings today. Saw some really nice homes, some on the lake shore but the best ones were off the water.

I stopped by the marina Office to ask about birth and dry stack costs. Just under $300 per month for each. I need to get on the wait list, probably long ones, for both. If I get one I will have to keep the boat there all year or I will lose my spot. This complicates things, I will have to tow, launch, recover and re tow if I go with covered storage. If I got a berth, I’d add my own lift to it if they would let me.

unles I got a house off the water with storage space for my boat I will have to store it nearby at another facility, I don’t yet know what that will cost or if there is a wait list for it.

Hopefully you'll find one with an underground bunker. I would love to own a houseboat right now.

 

[adrianp89]

Update on this adventure. We went to 5 open house showings today. Saw some really nice homes, some on the lake shore but the best ones were off the water.

I stopped by the marina Office to ask about birth and dry stack costs. Just under $300 per month for each. I need to get on the wait list, probably long ones, for both. If I get one I will have to keep the boat there all year or I will lose my spot. This complicates things, I will have to tow, launch, recover and re tow if I go with covered storage. If I got a berth, I’d add my own lift to it if they would let me.

unles I got a house off the water with storage space for my boat I will have to store it nearby at another facility, I don’t yet know what that will cost or if there is a wait list for it.

Are there apps where you find people renting out their un-used dock?

 

[Ronnie]

Are there apps where you find people renting out their un-used dock?

I will check but wonder how viable such options are, especially for private docks connected directly to a persons home. The shared private docks should not be an issue but the truly private docks maybe problematic as i would have to go through someone’s back yard to get to the dock.

 

[Ronnie]

My wife and I Hit a major milestone yesterday when our home was listed for sale. It took us a few weeks and a few thousand dollars to prep our house and it looks great. I keep seeing and hearing that it will sell quick as is but we made improvements for us to enjoy in case we don’t sell for any reason and would make a lot more if we decided to stay.

Anyway, we had two families visit the house tonight, have an appointment for another walk through tomorrow morning and will conduct and open house tomorrow afternoon.

Here is the kicker. The second family, who are family friends, made an offer over our asking price, in CASH, not a cashier’s check or electronic transfer, straight Benjamins. I’m tempted to accept the offer and have a cash counting session with him. I have access to a cash counter so it wouldn’t take long but it would be more fun to count it by hand. However it takes 10,000 100’s to make a $1,000,000 and the final price will be over that. We would have sore fingers for days if we tried to count it all by hand. We won’t accept the offer, at least not yet. Some homes nearby have sold for over $200k over their $1m + asking prices so we want to see where this is going.

 

[Ronnie]

I could not sleep last night. We are going to an open house and to look at a few others today. We really like the one of them but so do a lot of other parties based on the views and saves on Zillow. There is another house that won’t be available until next week which has a deeded slip /I dock across the street, I love the initial asking price but can’t afford to bid much more than $100k over it. We have not bid on any homes yet but should be soon, clearly we are about to experience the other end of this crazy housing market (I.e., a bidding war or several from the buyers/bidders perspective). I am very concerned.

 

[OCMD]

You should be concerned and your inner radar is buzzing for a reason. I would not get into a bidding war over a home. This many times causes an overreaction which translates to over bidding. The market is much too hot to handle and you do not want to make a decision under such pressure. As happened years ago, when the correction occurs (and it will) you do not want to be under water. With interests rates and inflation continuing to escalate, you should be concerned. At least until we get some strong, common sense leadership back in this country and things stabilize. I'm hitting the 3rd year anniversary of my Florida home purchase and realtors are banging my door down asking to list it as I will get twice what I paid 3 short years ago. I bought it as a rental as it was a mile from the college my kid attended and is/was a stupendous tax advantage until the kid graduated. No way in hell would I pay the price the realtors will get for this house today! I thought it was a tad overpriced when I picked it up. We decided to keep it even if we only visit 12 weeks a year but if we wanted to sell? Where else would we buy in Florida as the prices are spiraling out of control everywhere. It has to end somewhere and will. remember though, this is just one moron's opinion - my two cents on the forum.

 

[RobbieO]

My wife and I Hit a major milestone yesterday when our home was listed for sale. It took us a few weeks and a few thousand dollars to prep our house and it looks great. I keep seeing and hearing that it will sell quick as is but we made improvements for us to enjoy in case we don’t sell for any reason and would make a lot more if we decided to stay.

Anyway, we had two families visit the house tonight, have an appointment for another walk through tomorrow morning and will conduct and open house tomorrow afternoon.

Here is the kicker. The second family, who are family friends, made an offer over our asking price, in CASH, not a cashier’s check or electronic transfer, straight Benjamins. I’m tempted to accept the offer and have a cash counting session with him. I have access to a cash counter so it wouldn’t take long but it would be more fun to count it by hand. However it takes 10,000 100’s to make a $1,000,000 and the final price will be over that. We would have sore fingers for days if we tried to count it all by hand. We won’t accept the offer, at least not yet. Some homes nearby have sold for over $200k over their $1m + asking prices so we want to see where this is going.

Good luck bringing all those Benjamins to the bank. IRS will want to know where it came from, and how they got it, what cartel you belong to, and so on and so on. They want the banks to start reporting any cash deposit over $600. ???????????????????

 

[Ronnie]

You should be concerned and your inner radar is buzzing for a reason. I would not get into a bidding war over a home. This many times causes an overreaction which translates to over bidding. The market is much too hot to handle and you do not want to make a decision under such pressure. As happened years ago, when the correction occurs (and it will) you do not want to be under water. With interests rates and inflation continuing to escalate, you should be concerned. At least until we get some strong, common sense leadership back in this country and things stabilize. I'm hitting the 3rd year anniversary of my Florida home purchase and realtors are banging my door down asking to list it as I will get twice what I paid 3 short years ago. I bought it as a rental as it was a mile from the college my kid attended and is/was a stupendous tax advantage until the kid graduated. No way in hell would I pay the price the realtors will get for this house today! I thought it was a tad overpriced when I picked it up. We decided to keep it even if we only visit 12 weeks a year but if we wanted to sell? Where else would we buy in Florida as the prices are spiraling out of control everywhere. It has to end somewhere and will. remember though, this is just one moron's opinion - my two cents on the forum.

I’m not worried about interest rates, if we take out a mortgage it will be a small short one. Still it’s stressful, great if your selling horrible if you are buying. If we wait our house appreciates faster than those in our destination but the destination house will still cost more in the future.

we are still going back and forth on whether to focus on homes with water access or ample storage space and no parking restrictions.

 

[Ronnie]

Good luck bringing all those Benjamins to the bank. IRS will want to know where it came from, and how they got it, what cartel you belong to, and so on and so on. They want the banks to start reporting any cash deposit over $600. ???????????????????

$600, what a low limit. I was a merchant teller for Bank of America when I was in college and the law was $10k or more in cash in on or out had to be reported, alternatively any suspicious transactions / recurring frequently. I had drug dealers making $9,900 deposits almost daily. I let the bank managers decide if they wanted to report them, they never did.

we are not taking the all cash offer, i fear a few things, God and the IRS are two of them, not necessarily in that order.

 

[RobbieO]

$600, what a low limit. I was a merchant teller for Bank of America when I was in college and the law was $10k or more in cash in on or out had to be reported, alternatively any suspicious transactions / recurring frequently. I had drug dealers making $9,900 deposits almost daily. I let the bank managers decide if they wanted to report them, they never did.

we are not taking the all cash offer, i fear a few things, God and the IRS are two of them, not necessarily in that order.

That was proposed by Biden, but nothing has been passed as of yet.

 

[BlkGS]

I could not sleep last night. We are going to an open house and to look at a few others today. We really like the one of them but so do a lot of other parties based on the views and saves on Zillow. There is another house that won’t be available until next week which has a deeded slip /I dock across the street, I love the initial asking price but can’t afford to bid much more than $100k over it. We have not bid on any homes yet but should be soon, clearly we are about to experience the other end of this crazy housing market (I.e., a bidding war or several from the buyers/bidders perspective). I am very concerned.

We bought our current home at the start of all this due to a relocation. We saw our home the day after it went on the market, and there were at least 3 or 4 other parties that viewed it. We put in an offer on the spot of 1k over asking because we felt it was over fairly priced and didn't want to deal with a buncha BS. The sellers responded to our written offer with a verbal "we had multiple offers please submit your best offer". We told them they had already received our offer and had ~24 hours left to respond.

Needless to say they accepted it immediately after that. I suspect they didn't have another offer at all and were trying to milk us. I have no patience for shiesters like that.

 

[Ronnie]

So it’s been a while since i have given an update on this. Here goes:

my wife and I put a bid on a house in discovery bay, $25k over the asking price. We ended up being the only bidders and so of course our offer was accepted. This is the first home I hav purchased so I was a little surprised by the letter, “congrats on your purchase, two paragraphs later, your earnest money deposit (emd) of 2% of the purchase price is due in 24 hours. Include two months of bank statements to prove that it’s your money.” No problem I had it and paid it less than 18 hours later. Escrow closes at the end of next month.

fast forward a few days. We conducted our second open house on Saturday. We were told not to expect any offers until Monday. Didn’t hear from our realtors until after 5. We received four offers, one below our listing price, one for our listing price, one $100k over and the final $190k over. The last was a cash offer with no contingencies and two conditions, move out the day after escrow closes and accept by the end of the night. We accepted by email / DocuSign before went to bed, the buyer paid his 3% emd today, faster than I did. Escrow closes at the end of next month assuming the inspections don’t turn up anything crazy expensive to repair.

about the new house: 2 story, just under 2k square feet, 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car attached garage solar already installed. No dock in the back yard nor a deeded dock across the street. I will getting on the Marina wait list soon but only for the convenience of not having to tow and launch when I want to boat for the bargain price of $285 per month. I suspect that once I’m in I won’t leave since I may not be able to get back in the following season. However, the new house has a permitted side yard drive driveway/storage area that will allow me to store both the boat and Waverunners on their trailers connected to their tow vehicles in line behind the fence. Additionally, the Local marina is less than a mile from the house.

it is my dream home? No but it’s in the center of discovery bay, we can and may pay it off and it’s a big improvement over what we currently have. It’s the first time we will have air conditioning since we got married over 20 years of ago. My wife loves the modern kitchen and the indoor washer and drier. Last but not least, it’s a lot closer to my mother, bother and other family and friends.

we were worried that the interest rate hike to 5% would keep buyers away, thankfully we were wrong.
we also thought we would be in a bidding war, thankfully we were wrong again. We started looking for a place to stay while we have the house painted and new carpet installed. We found an air BNB on the water in discovery bay. Thought it would be $200 or so a night, unthankfully we were wrong, currently $633 per night. I do wonder how many nights it’s rented out per year.

on an unrelated note, I filled my tank with super unleaded (92 octane) at a local gas station tonight for $6.19 a gallon for a $100 total) not because I don’t have the money but because $100 is the per transaction limit.

 

[Jim_in_Delaware]

@Ronnie,

Congratulations on the new house, it sounds like it checked off a lot of the boxes!

Is there a possibility to buy a deeded dock in the future or are the docks tied to the lots?

How does the house bidding work? Do you list at appraised value and then accept the highest offer, or list below appraised value and hold until appraised value is reached?

It does sound like you got a good deal on both houses, the one you bought and the one you sold.

I think that people who seriously want to buy a house are still in at 5% and maybe even 6%. The nice thing about mortgages is that if one can afford whatever is the current interest rate that one can always refinance later.

Jim

 

[Ronnie]

@Ronnie,

Congratulations on the new house, it sounds like it checked off a lot of the boxes!

Is there a possibility to buy a deeded dock in the future or are the docks tied to the lots?

How does the house bidding work? Do you list at appraised value and then accept the highest offer, or list below appraised value and hold until appraised value is reached?

It does sound like you got a good deal on both houses, the one you bought and the one you sold.

I think that people who seriously want to buy a house are still in at 5% and maybe even 6%. The nice thing about mortgages is that if one can afford whatever is the current interest rate that one can always refinance later.

Jim

I don’t know if I can lease or sublease from anyone with a berth on a community dock yet. I will look into it but there are several of these throughout discovery bay. I would need to find one close by and whose HOA rules allow owners to lease or rent their births out. I sure hope so.

so here is how it worked for me on the selling end. We listed for $101k less than the average low end comparative homes for sale in the area. Why because we intended to sell “as is” regardless of what issues the house may have or what they cost to fix. We weren’t willing tosell for less than are asking price and realize that our home doesn’t have the upgrades and updates that many others have. On the Monday after our second open house on Saturday (the first was more like a trial run), a due date we set for offers, we spoke to our realtors who presented all offers to us. Not sure why the highest bidder bid $190k over asking but did notice the $10k was pretty much what my section 1 (recommended repairs) cost. Also, the bid matched the zest imate (Zillow estimate) for that date.

on the buyers side, we wanted to see a house we saw on Zillow but were told don’t bother because the seller has already received several offers, some all cash and the sellers were sending out a multiple bidder counter offer that day. My understanding is that the counter offer is the same to all bidders and often includes a range of the previous offers or the amount of the last highest offer along with a list of conditions and an implied invitation to accept the new offer or reject and counter with a different offer. This goes on until the seller accepts an offer or takes the house off the market. So glad o didn’t get into that.

The interest rate doesn’t seem to matter to those paying in cash.

funny related story: we told our son about the sale, he said, congrats you are a millionaire. We reminded him that he’s part of the family and he yelled, hey roomy, I’m a millionaire. If only the first part were true. I’d love to get a print out from the arm which showed a million plus balance but the mortgage on this house needs to be paid off first, subtract real estate fees, tax and misc fees followed by the capital gains tax and a $1m gross sales turns into a lot less really fast.

i am so happy to be done or a lot closer to being done/mortgage free.

 

[Ronnie]

Getting closer to closing on the sale of our current and purchase of our future home. I thought getting a new (to me) boat was expensive, housing is in a different league. Lots of ups and downs during the process as well. Will the appraisal be as expected? Any section one findings, repair or replace recommendations and how much will they cost? Storage? New appliances? How long before I have to replace the roof, fencing with lumber at pandemic prices!!! The lists go on and on but thankfully things have been lining up in our favor and it looks like we will be closing at both locations at the end of this month.

In the interim we have been shopping, before We move in we will have the interior and exterior painted, as well as have all the carpet replaced and hopefully some of the section one repairs started. I was there recently and determined that from my driveway to the boat Ramp at the marina is one mile. No more or very few long drives towing a boat in the near future. I’m on the waiting list for the first available spot (dry stack or wet birth) in the Marina and I’ve started some back and forth with the manager. Told him my son grew up boating and May apply for a summer job there. The manager got real interestEd when I said that, grabbed an application for me and I planted the seed that employees should move up the wait list faster than non employees. I’m hoping for a birth and would outfitted with a jet dock or something similar. I wont have my boat at my own dock in the backyard but woild still be very happy with one a mile away.

 

[scokill]

Good luck bringing all those Benjamins to the bank. IRS will want to know where it came from, and how they got it, what cartel you belong to, and so on and so on. They want the banks to start reporting any cash deposit over $600. ???????????????????

Personally I wouldn’t accept cash. To much risk for all involved and hassle. Plus escrow or title company and all involved wouldn’t likely accept cash either.