Thanks for the information, it’s very helpful... yow that is a seller based extraction system to get people to bid the maximum
I can see why it may appear that way, but actually not really. There are a number of nuanced layers I did not delve into.
When the NWMLS drafts their PSA forms, I can assure you their goal is to produce a document that is the most fair for all parties involved given the circumstances.
Oh I can see that it is fair, ethical and above board fully disclosed... didn’t mean to characterize it as otherwise.
however, the implication of the maximum bid escalator clause is a seller biased built in price manufacturing mechanism that the selling agent hopes they can employ in the early phases of the sale cycle to create the fear of losing the property with in order to boost value to maximum levels.
the net effect is advantage seller under those circumstances, especially since the seller is not obligated to take the lower teaser offer that is introduced as an inducement to bid over the stated sale price
I think the realities of the market - ie no supply - have more to do with the position of power the Seller wields than any perceived nefarious intent of a broker.
Yah, I believe that we are actually thinking the same things even if it doesn't sound like it. What I'm intending to say is that the seller's agent is hoping to establish an advantage for the seller if they can [of course the seller hopes for that, and the good agent is going to do that, and that is certainly not a nefarious intention] ~ and that the ability to create that environment on behalf of the seller totally depends on supply and demand. I have also been breathlessly stating that the dynamic when it works, it is an awesome tactical strategy on behalf of the seller because it puts a lot of pressure on the buyer, which for a lot of buyers is a new frontier dynamic to consider.
The way our Seattle listing played out was kind of interesting. Our house went live on the MLS on a Sunday night. Offer review date of the following Friday. We had no offer in hand by the expiration of the review date. Then within a few hours we got 3 offers, all with escalators. The winners were $60K over asking, waived inspection and solid financing. Several of the prospective buyers said they had been burned too many times by doing pre-inspections before a review date and preferred to let the offer review date expire and go from there.
I get the escalators in a sellers market, but no inspection? Fuck that. I will never buy a home without an inspection. I just won't live there. That's absurd. Let me pay a million bucks for your house that flooded two years ago and I have no idea....real estate up there has gotten insane....
I agree with you @swaye . I'd never buy a home w/o an inspection. In fact, I'd almost be in favor of some sort of consumer protection in RE which gives a buyer an inspection contingency no matter what.
That said, desperate times call for desperate measures and plenty of folks waive it in Seattle. And you better believe I truthfully disclosed every defect that I was aware of along with providing receipts for any work I had done- e.g., tuck pointing the chimney, fixing the first 5 or so feet of the sewer line (along with providing the sewer scope video), etc.
Sewer scope/ line repair is a big one in Seattle now eh @pawz ?
When we decided we had to sell our newly-remodeled, gentrified house (1923) in the midst of the 08 bubble burst, the tipping point was the sewer line was failing...
Sounds shitty.
#SWIDT?
It was, especially in the basement...
EDIT: I've done a lot of tough jobs in my life, and have prided myself on grinding through to get the job completed, but cleaning that basement took super-human levels of intestinal fortitude (pun definitely intended)...
About two years ago, my wife tells me that our kitchen sink won't drain. I do the drain cleaner thing first. When that doesn't work, I take the P-trap apart. Still nope.
Off to the hardware store for a snake. I got the kind you can hook up to a drill and made sure it had a decent diameter line. P-trap dumps into a vertical that goes through the floor into the basement and a cleanout-wye that I opened up, funneled to a now wonderful smelling bucket (gag reflex), and inserted the snake. From there, a 15' run with a slight drop (too slight, but construction-limited) over the hallway and into the utility room, ninety, a last 10' run against the wall to the waste stack.
Drill, drill, drill, drill, sound and resistance change, pull it out, cap everything up, test at the sink... No drain. This little dance repeats another time or two before I ask my beard to go stand by the waste stack and listen for the snake hitting it so I know for sure I'm through. She eventually tells me I'm there, I go listen to verify, then, satisfied, I retract the snake, throw it away because of how disgusting it was at that point, and button everything up.
Aaaaaaaand the sink doesn't drain.
Back to the hardware store, three sticks of ABS, a sweep el, a coupling, and some solvent. Out comes the sawzall. Piece by piece, that sink drain line went out the window into the yard. I don't get queasy easily, but I fought the urge to paint the walls the whole time. When I say I'd rather the pipes have been full of shit, I'm not exaggerating. Turns out the snake was never going to work. What the pipe was full of was some kind of self-healing fatty blob that smelled like the worst thing I've ever smelled. About 20' of it. The snake would chew through it, I'd retract the snake, the blob would just heal itself like a goopey sphincter closing up every time.
I've done some absolute shit jobs, but that had to be the worst.
Lolz. It must have been bad to prefer to deal with shit. Shit is my stopping line.
Did you ever figure out what the hell it was? I was going to say your wife dropped some hot grease down and it solidified, but that wouldn't fill itself back into shape. Was the fucking the alive?
So I used to battle the kitchen sink (not like your battle, but the trap and the connector from the disposal to the main line, etc. used to get clogged all the time If you even showed the sink a bowl of left-over rice, it would pre-emptively clog up.
So I go to Home Depot and basically ask for the Binford 5,000 of disposals. More than 3x the horsepower of the old one. Literally nothing stands a chance with that thing. Sometimes I think the lights dim when I flip it on but IDGAF because not once have I been under that fucking sink since I bought that big boy 3 or 4 years ago.
When we built our current home I told the Mrs we’re going with a 1hp disposal. She puts everything in there and it shreds the fuck out of it. My neighbor stayed with the 1/2 hp model and his wife/kids plug it up once a month.
A few weeks ago my brother-in-law, who is clueless about basic mechanical repair, calls me up to tell me he has water coming out of the “thingy” on top of the sink whenever the dishwasher drains. He had just replaced the old disposal by himself and assumed it was good since the sink and disposal drained fine. I go over to his house and sure as shit water is pouring out the air gap during dishwasher drain cycle. Open up the cabinets and ask him to tell me what could cause this. He looks at it and shrugs his shoulders. Ok, see the dishwasher drain goes to the air gap, and the hose out of the air gap goes to the disposal. Sink and disposal drain fine? Yup. Any dishwater drain problems with old disposal? Nope. Disconnect the line from the disposal, put my finger in the drain input and there is something blocking my finger from the disposal chamber. Ask brother-in-law if he followed installation directions. Yup. Really, then why is this fucking punch-out still intact dumbshit? Hammer it out, reconnect line, and no more air gap waterfalls. Shake my head, tell him to hire a plumber or buy me a fifth of whiskey next time to get it done right.
I knew where this story was going by line 3. Guess how I knew? I was the dumbshit who didn't knock out the punch out the first time I swapped a disposal about 20 years ago. Directions are for pussies and I LOVE flooding! Luckily I was able to unfuck it myself, and didn't have to call for help. It did teach me a valuable lesson about at least skimming the instructions in the future.
At least you had the sense to know why it wouldn’t drain. I was shocked (lulz) he knew how to wire the new disposal correctly and was able to get it to fit on the collar.
CSB....my wife somehow broke off the grounding plug from her sewing machine cord in the outlet. After a few whiskey sours I tell my son tonight he’s going to learn basic electrical repair. Outlet is upstairs and service panel is in the garage. He asks which breaker to shut off. I explain to him how you can avoid that by working “hot.” I have him pop the plate off and get the outlet out of the wall. Son, there are 3 wires. Green is Ground, Black is Hot, and White is Neutral. As I’m showing him this I tell him you’re good as long as you don’t touch Black and White at the same time, which I of course do. Motherfucking Son of a Bitch! He laughs as my arm is shaking. We replace the outlet so now it’s time to test it before we put it back in the wall. Plug in lamp and no light. Plug in wife’s sewing machine and no power. Breaker tripped when I became part of the circuit. He resets it and asks why we didn’t do that in the first place. Because I’m too damn lazy and getting shocked puts hair on your nuts
I should use my might powers and pin this story.
Sounds like something my FIL would do. Dude knows infinitely more than I do about literally anything that is practical and relates to real life (but I understand Cartesian Dualism bitch!). Anyway, he would sometimes show me shit and while doing it skip over some steps that lesser men have to follow because he actually does know what he's doing. The funniest moments with him have been when he winds up fucking himself by doing that. "We don't need to shut off the main water valve. All we have to do is this and ... fuck! fuck! fuck!" Wrong one buddy. If we'd shut it off the main, it wouldn't have mattered.
I’ve been bitten by 120AC so many times I’ve lost track. I’m such a knucklehead that I still choose to work hot a majority of the time. Pride and laziness are a bad combo with electricity
Same. Also have lost track of how many times I've ridden the lightning°. The worst was the time I was adding a few breakers to the panel for a backup generator and an outdoor 120 outlet (didn't have one until then). I told myself, "Okay, now this just got real. That 20A shit will put hair on your nuts, but you want no part of those service conductors. Do NOT fuck around and hit those main lugs."
So I've got my screwdriver in hand, I'm punching out knockouts and routing wires to the ground/neutral bus, and of course I start getting a little too comfortable. At some point I feel a really faint pulsing through my whole body. I look up, and my screwdriver happens to be brushing right up against one of the hot mains. HOLY FUCK!
I was wearing thick soled sandals. I'm no electrician, but my theory is either that or the plastic screwdriver grip is what saved my life.
I've fallen off ladders several times, I've hammered fingers and thumbs more times than I can count, and one time I even fell through my ceiling and was dangling by my armpits 12' above a concrete floor (of course just a couple of days after disassembling and putting away the drywall lift...).
The worst, though, was when I almost died in the most comical and stupid way possible. I had an armload of tools that I was carrying from the house to the shop, and so I kind of awkwardly bent down and picked up my cordless drill with a few fingers. The load shifted, and suddenly the trigger of the drill was pressed into the webbing between thumb and pointer finger. Naturally, the drill bit was aiming square into my chest, took off, and started winding up my shirt, pulling toward my chest. Instinctively, I pushed away, but this only pulled the trigger harder, spinning up the bit to full speed, dragging the bit into my chest even faster. I had a split second to think, "What an embarrassing way to die!" before my shirt tore, freeing the bit and leaving a baseball-sized hole right over my right nipple.
That shirt is still in my housework rotation. My beard laughs every time she sees me wearing it.
Comments
Electricity is scary and magical which makes it a profit center in contracting
So I've got my screwdriver in hand, I'm punching out knockouts and routing wires to the ground/neutral bus, and of course I start getting a little too comfortable. At some point I feel a really faint pulsing through my whole body. I look up, and my screwdriver happens to be brushing right up against one of the hot mains. HOLY FUCK!
I was wearing thick soled sandals. I'm no electrician, but my theory is either that or the plastic screwdriver grip is what saved my life.
I've fallen off ladders several times, I've hammered fingers and thumbs more times than I can count, and one time I even fell through my ceiling and was dangling by my armpits 12' above a concrete floor (of course just a couple of days after disassembling and putting away the drywall lift...).
The worst, though, was when I almost died in the most comical and stupid way possible. I had an armload of tools that I was carrying from the house to the shop, and so I kind of awkwardly bent down and picked up my cordless drill with a few fingers. The load shifted, and suddenly the trigger of the drill was pressed into the webbing between thumb and pointer finger. Naturally, the drill bit was aiming square into my chest, took off, and started winding up my shirt, pulling toward my chest. Instinctively, I pushed away, but this only pulled the trigger harder, spinning up the bit to full speed, dragging the bit into my chest even faster. I had a split second to think, "What an embarrassing way to die!" before my shirt tore, freeing the bit and leaving a baseball-sized hole right over my right nipple.
That shirt is still in my housework rotation. My beard laughs every time she sees me wearing it.