Hi Jo! Love the memoirs idea!

It appears that your market is experiencing an incline like we did in the states a few years ago. If you're following the market down here, you know that it all came crashing down.

People were buying homes and reselling them in a few short months for a profit without doing any improvements.

I personally bought a home from a builder in Jan 2005 when people were waiting in line to get contracts and now we have already lost $80,000 of our value.

Tell your clients to be careful. They should only over pay for a home they are planning to stay in for many years to come or it could get ugly.

Sincerely,
Sandra
Tampa, FL Realtor

We have lost 7 houses in teh last year due to bidding wars. As of right now we have yet another offer in ... well i guess i should start with 2 weeks ago:

We finally sold our house firm and final ... only condition was that we find suitable housing and the buyer agreed and gave us 3 weeks to do so.

we found a house that we adored right away, our agent was out of town so he had another agent from his office bring us through it and when our agent "Bill" got back that evening we put in an offer, it was below asking price but it was the best we could do. The house had been on the market for almost a year no offers and no interest and too many price reductions. we thought we had found a steal. we handed the offer in at 11pm Monday night, it was going to be presented at 9am ... wouldn't you know it though the agent that brought is through for "Bill" just happened to have clients that wanted through Tuesday 8:30am ... she got them through and they put in an offer. we upped our offer and we thought we got the place we were told by the sellers agent to come over and sign the papers ... we got there Tuesday 6pm and the people who bid against us had bid over asking and had finished signing the papers on what we thought was our house.

fast forward one week. we found another place we liked. went in at full asking price ... only conditional on financing for this property (with a letter showing we had been approved for a more expensive place just one week before) we thought this put us in a good spot. I mean the place was a bank foreclosure and we were able to take immediate possession if need be (the potential buyers on our place were 1st time buyers living with relations and could/wanted a quick close). Well yet again we're in a bid war ... maybe 8th time is a charm because if it isn't i give up.

We find out on friday if they accepted or not. if they don't we let the sale on our house fall through.

I just can't take it any more we just want a nice home with room for our four boys and us to spread out a little. we're not asking for a mansion we just want something we can call home.