Rally in Affordability.

This is unbelievable news. 10% of listings sought accepted 20% of asking?

Where is a good place to look for this bargains?
What about 2009 rentals?

i call fake

"he got hit"

In the face maybe...

I call shenanigans.

this is fact

Are they listed on hreo.com?
Can you link to the listings?

$5 million house for $1 million? Something don't smell right.

bank capitulation alpine292... will likely be public information in short order divvie

Its sad that you think we're dumb enough to believe this. It speaks more to your intelligence, and makes everything else you say quite suspect.

$5m house for $1m..the house was probably bought in '99 and paid $300k so $1m is still $700k profit. You're looking at the drop in price...look at what the seller paid for the home.

Keep pressing the 'ignore this person' button tech_guy... stay in your delusional little bubble. This is fact.

adam,

i am as bearish as anyone, and it may eventually come to pass that a house that once asked $5 million sells for $1 million. crazier things have happened. but either you are lying, or your friend is lying. no one accepts 1/5th their asking price--no one.

I can believe it. Not too long ago, $1MM was a lot to pay for a second home. Given that $5MM doesn't buy you what you might think in the Hamptons, and that Wall St was the driver of that mkt, I can definitely see it reverting to $1MM. My ex boss bought a house out there for less than that in 2000.

However, we're still talking about a second home market. People will hang on longer in NYC if it's their primary home.

$5 mm is a lot for a second home and prices for second homes will come down MUCH faster than first homes. But I agree with happyrenter - it's extraordinarily unlikely that one would except 1/5 of asking. In reality, if one had no bites and NO interest, one would cut your prices by 25% or maybe even 50% to see if there were any bites. But you wouldn't just accept 25% - not without testing tha market at in between prices. $1mm may be there fair price, but that is not the point

"look at what the seller paid for the home"

no. if i have an asset, any asset, and i think its worth X, I'm not taking 20%X even if I got it for free, unless of course I'm forced to.

if you use leverage and the margin clerk comes knocking, you will be forced to

you would be forced to accept 1/5th your asking price? if you were in that much distress, why wouldn't you have lowered your asking price, say 50% or 60% or 70%, before accepting 80% off? i'm done with this thread. if you have evidence that this occurred, please share it. otherwise, it's just bullshit.

If property was that levered unlikely that the $1 mm covered the loan ...and if it was a forced short-sale they would have been asking a very low price in the first place (if $5mm was the "low" price, and it went for $1mm, that makes this more unbelievable.

"Keep pressing the 'ignore this person' button tech_guy... stay in your delusional little bubble. This is fact."

Now I know who you are. I've only ignored 1 person on this board - Admiral, for veiled death threats. That was weeks ago, before you showed up.

kspeak... not talking about leverage in the property specifically... if there's no bid for other assets you've borrowed against then you'll hit the bid available. If these properties were bank owned and those banks are on the brink, then they'll sell what they can (as some paper they 'own' has no bid at all)...

tech_guy... I respect you as a human even if I don't respect your opinion... I would never threaten you or anyone else

The mortgage on a $ 5 million house is likely going to be more than $1 million so I doubt the lender would let the house go that cheap, even if the seller agreed to. If I wanted to, I can agree to short sell my house for $50,000. But there is no way Chase would agree to such a sale.

AdamM - Any update on this you can provide? Would like to now where in Hamptons, etc.

I was with a friend who works in leverage finance at a top investment bank who owns a house in east hampton and he started to tell me this same exact story. Said it was someone at his company who bid about 15 houses, put 1MM bids on all got hit on 2 and will buy 1. I believe it.

What's an investment bank?

Why not try this strategy in Manhattan? Park Ave is probably a great place to start...

Thanks ante148... I knew this information would be confirmed eventually (but a very tough crowd on this site!).

buster... I'll give it a try in a few months for sure...

I am not sure some random 3rd party conversations / heresay / rumors posted by someone are any sort of confirmation of anything. For all we know, adamm and ante148 are the same people.

I would bet that real estate agents bury the real lowball offers. Yeah, yeah, they're bound by law to present them all but how would anybody ever know?

can't this urban legend crawl off and die already? look, we all know you can get an amazing deal in the hamptons right now. this silly story is irrelevant.

Which urban legend would that be?

about 5 hours ago
ignore this person
report abuse I was with a friend who works in leverage finance at a top investment bank who owns a house in east hampton and he started to tell me this same exact story. Said it was someone at his company who bid about 15 houses, put 1MM bids on all got hit on 2 and will buy 1. I believe it.

Ok, sounds like a BS rumor now...

You could all be right, it could be a tall tale heard on the street. but my friend and I were talking about real estate and out comes this story. he is going out with an agent this weekend and thinking about trying the same thing.

AdamM - please post property details if trade settles.

Hamptons are getting crushed. I checked out a short sale at the end of the summer, that still has a ways to go. the bank is slowly lowering their level. it was a house that had a $1.1MM 1st mortgage and a $350K 2nd with the same bank. The bank has torn up the 2nd and will currently sell at $750K. loss of $700K with a 30% severity on the first mortgage.

ante,

any advice on a good broker to work with in the hamptons? i've rented out there a couple times but don't know the sale market at all.

Like rentals, agents are broken down by region. My wife and I prefer Westhampton, the agent that we liked was Peggy (forgot last name) at Phillips Beach Realty. She was really nice and knew everything about everyone in the Westhampton area. How long lived there, financial situation, etc.

Why do I even bother reading thread like this?

I don't find this hard to believe at all. Plenty (if not MOST) of those places were only worth $1m 5 years ago. The stock market has given back more then 5 years of gains, why wouldn't the Hamptons?

My friend's cousin went to a bar in the Hamptons and woke up in a tub of ice wn his kidneys were gone. He said that it was becasue people were trading 1 kidney for 1 $5 million house in the Hamptons. Maybe the guy you work with knows my friend's cousin?