Re: Quoting price without a license - Posted by Tom-FL
Posted by Tom-FL on October 08, 2003 at 23:21:45:
It all sounds just a little goofy to me.
What this guy is telling you is that no one is allowed to buy a house unless they are an agent or have an agent. That borders on the absurd. Although there is a thread going on at the main news group about some states limiting you to 5 deals a year without some kind of license.
I’m wondering if he thinks you are planning to “price” houses for a fee. That would make you an appraiser and subject to the licensing standards for that activity. I can see that. That said, his wife, or you or me or anyone can call up and make an offer. That’s what the house is worth TO US. Maybe the guy is concerned about you quoting the “Market Value” of the house as a fact. But then, we are talking about appraisals again, not a guy making an offer on a house.
As to question #2, it is entirely possible in some areas that houses are inspected in some fashion by the government at time of sale, and thus are checked for code. I’d think that would produce a lot of irate voters though. In most places, if the code changes, the existing housing stock is grandfathered in. Otherwise, you really would have to spend outrageous amounts to upgrade a house to sell it if you own it more than a few years. The codes change depending on which way the wind blows, and who is in power. I would think around here that a 15 year old house would have to meet so many new stipulations that it would be cheaper and easier to knock it down and start over rather than try to upgrade it.
That said, it is true that if you START something and pull a permit, sometimes the whole system has to be upgraded because you touched it. Let’s say you have a house that is so old that the wires run individually through the walls on ceramic insulators. Now, you decide to upgrade the circuit box from the 60 amp fuse box to a 200 amp circuit breaker setup. Well, now it wouldn’t suprise me a bit if you were facing a complete rewire, because you tinkered with it. Had you left the old box alone, you probably would not have had to change the wires, because they were code at the time the house was built. Be very careful starting “simple” projects.
At any rate, even if you DID have to meet current code on every house, you just build that into your purchase price. So what if you lost a deal cuz another guy offered more, you know he’s going to take a bath. You should be glad it wasn’t you.
A good rule of thumb is to take the price you think it’s worth, times 70%, minus repair costs. So you have a 200k house. Start with 140k (70% X 200k), then if the repairs to bring it up to code are 100k (good golly), then offer 40k. Your guy probably wasn’t buying right so now he’s trying to discourage you in the business.
They may also be honking on you because you’re young too.