Buyer Tips

“This looks absolutely nothing like it looked online! Real estate photography is a scam!” When people walk into the house, a lot of the time, they’d realize it’s not exactly the same as what they saw online. There’s a reason for that, and you should know what you’re looking at before showing up so you can set your expectations. So today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics—real estate photography. The reason why it’s my favorite? Because it’s what I do all day. I look at photos of houses, take photos, try and get them to tell a story or present the house in the best light.

Can I buy a house for less than 20% down payment? Today, I want to cover a couple of things when it comes to how much cash you need as down payment when buying a house. The first one is what you can do nationally. The other is what is potentially available to you as a home buyer or an investor versus what will actually succeed in this Bay Area market. Because these two are very different things, I think it’s really important to pay attention to these when you consider what you should do and what you can do here in this market.

When you’re talking about making a cash offer in this real estate market, what do you need to know? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

I want to talk about the topic of cash in today’s real estate market, mainly because a lot of people want to ask how many cash offers are there. How many people are just throwing money at houses to succeed? How can I compete if I don’t have that cash? Or, should I use my cash because it will help me compete if I have it available? Let’s start by talking about the really obvious differences between a cash and a financed offer.

It’s the question that’s older than time itself: chocolate or vanilla, left or right, ask directions or just go for it, rent or buy? Because you have made it clear that this is a topic of interest today, I wanted to talk about the renting versus buying question here in the Bay Area, specifically. I have this conversation regularly with folks considering jumping into the housing market for the first time because interest rates are so low. Instead of renting their apartment, house, or wherever they currently live, they’re now considering having their own home.

If you clicked on this video, you’re clearly interested in pocket listings, how to find them, what they are, and what it means to you in the East Bay real estate market. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

Even though everybody said it’s impossible to get your offer accepted, you still did. You succeeded. You won—congratulations! The contract is now signed and ratified, and your earnest money is in. Everything’s all good… until you get that appraisal number. It turns out you’re one of those people who got an appraisal lower than the purchase price. Now, that’s a problem for a lot of reasons.

A Zombie Foreclosure, other than just being a really fun name, is an opportunity for you to get a killer deal in this market. No zombie pun intended! It is another iteration of foreclosure that you should be aware of because it’s not going to show up in the traditional way like we talked about previously with foreclosures versus short sales.

Short Sales versus Foreclosures. This is a topic that I’ve done a few videos on relative to the foreclosure side of things. Now, I’ve been seeing a lot of people ask about them again, especially since it’s such a competitive market. They probably still remember how it is back in the day when short sales and foreclosures were really good deals. Back then, you might have to do some work, but you can definitely get those houses for a lot cheaper. Now that some of the laws have recently changed, let’s talk about short sales and foreclosures again, how they differ, and why that matters.