Talk of Offers, Appraisals & Hjarta Leasing

There’s a few interesting condo discussions on the Redfin Forums.

First up is, how much would your offer be for condos just under 400k?

One of our agents has this to say:

The condo market is definitely soft in these neighborhoods, and I am finding developers being negotiable; however many seem to only be coming down about 4%-8% off of the list price. Most developers would rather reduce their price by 5%-10% to draw a larger audience before they accept an offer 15% below list price or lower.

With a recent buyer writing about his experience:

For me, after reading a bunch of different sites that are both bullish and bearish I figure that Seattle area has another 5-15% drop still. With that in mind I figured as long as I got a minimum of 10% off the asking I was getting a decent deal. So I tried for 15% and ended up settling with about 13.25% / $53K off asking. In the end all the concessions stayed and we only haggled on the purchase price.

Second post is, Why do appraisals seem so scam like?

Also, I noticed that the NoHo Townhomes have only 1 unit left. Back in the middle of March they had only sold 1 unit.

And I know if this is news or not, but I drove by Hjarta in Ballard (80 units) yesterday and they have a bunch of lease signs up. This must totally suck for the 20 people who bought there and won’t be able to re-sale.

Gotta run and catch a flight to the Bay Area…