Our experience:

We just got a signed contract on our condo in Fairfax. We didn't sell it last year, but rented it out instead because we thought prices might stablize. Unfortunately, they have only gone down more.

I am of the mind that if you don't get offers early but have a reasonable amount of traffic, then more than likely you are priced too high. I tried to bypass this problem by asking our agent to list our condo for less than the others in our complex even though I knew ours had upgraded appliances and wood floors and was spotless, but guess what happened... we received lots of traffic but only one offer which was lower than our asking. After checking the most recently sold units of similar size, etc. we realized that their offer was close. Most of what is selling in our situation were short sales. We had only 1 comp in our very large complex that was a regular sale. We countered and got a signed contract in less than 1 month. We lost over 100k but I have been reading that the market is still in a downward trend and lot more people who have 3 and 5 year ARMS are going to be in trouble soon which means even more foreclosures and short sales. Even though these sales should not affect a regular sale they do, IMO, because the preception of the buyer changes when they see all the LOW prices, no matter what type of sale it is.

You have to know what you can live with, make a decision, and not look back. We figured Ithat we had made $$ in many other sales, so we are not going to waste our time wishing thing were different from what they are. Life is full of opportunities!!!

Good Luck with your decision!

Thanks Julie!
 

I am beginning to think just like you guys..If I thought the market was going to get better in the next couple of years, I would wait, but I dont think thats the case.....We already own our home in TV in Amelia, so that is not the decision maker ,etc...
PS I read your webpage/blog, was great! I think you did a fantastatic job of describing TV!

Sometimes it is wise to pay for an appraisal from the same people that do appraisals for a Mortgage Company. This appraisal can then be used by the buyer when they get their Mortgage. There us usually a transfer fee but much less than what the buyer will pay when they get a mortgage.

Hope that it fits your sales story and you can set it out on the table when the home is being shown and that will address any price issues your buyer might have about price. It will also help you feel comfortable about your sales price. This is a small price to pay for your own comfort and it may help you sell your home.

Remember if you sell your home and the buyer needs a mortgage and your home is appraised for less than the sales price then all bets are off so this is many times a good idea.

We sold our house late last summer in four days. It was listed at about 40K below what we wanted per our brokers recommendation. The first looker made a 100% offer that we accepted. Then we had to drop the price another 12K after it was appraised. This was about 30% below the high market of late 2005 but still 50% more than what we paid ten years earlier.


It is probably now worth 10% less than what we sold it for.

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One way to look at it is that you may get less, but on the other hand you will pay less. It probably just about evens out. If the market goes up and you get more, rest assured that a house in TV will cost more.

Not a hard and fast rule, of course. Just a way of making it more palatable to reduce the selling price of your house so you can get down here.

My wife and I are in the market for a house in TV at present. Some of the pre-owned homes we are looking at cost the sellers 20-30,000 more when they bought 2 or 3 years ago than they are selling them for now. You can look all this up on the tax records at www.sumterpa.com and see what I mean.

Reduce the price!
 

We were in the same dilemma spring of 2009. The realtor encouraged us to lower the price. We considered taking it off the market and waiting until 2010. Glad we didn't, and instead lowered the price. Today, 2010, the market has dropped yet another 5%. We sold our house within several months and are enjoying the good life of retirement.

A house is not a home
 

Your house is only worth what others are willing to pay. If you sell it at what the market price is, you are not giving it away. You can wait for the market to catch up (if it ever does) to the worth of your house in your head but if you do, then the price of what you buy to replace it will have risen accordingly.

We just moved to TV a month ago and had our home on the market for 7 months. We had two failed contracts due to inability to get mortages before we finally sold it. When I put it on the market I priced it at $130,000 less than it sold for two years ago. The current market price of my house had dropped that much. Over the course of the 7 months the market price dropped another $70,000. I followed the market by using Zillow.com to see what they estimated the market price to be and found them to be pretty spot on. When the market kept dropping, so did the selling price of my home. We made a decission to price our home much lower than we originally wanted to and we knew when we hit the magic number when the offers started coming in. At closing I asked what my house had appraised for and was told it was appraised for just $500 above what I sold it for. Did I give it away? No. I sold it for what the market was willing to pay. Even so, I still made a nice 30% profit because I bought it at a very low price just 8 years ago.

In this market you will have a lot of showings but everyone is aware that it is a buyer's market and there are a lot of desperate people out there who HAVE to sell and will lower their prices until they do. Then there are the foreclosures and short sales to compete against. Many buyers are looking for that million dollar home selling for $100K. We found ourselves trying to compete with new, larger and more luxurious homes who kept lowering their prices below ours in a desperate effort to sell. We did what we had to do to sell our home. I still made a nice profit but far from what I thought I would make.

Due to the lower than anticipated price we sold at I have a small mortgage instead of no mortgage but I am at least 7 years away from retirement and living here is well worth it. I would rather live here and work than to live back in NJ and work. We are now enjoying TV with a 70% reduction in our housing cost which is making up some of the difference between my idea of my home's worth and what I actually sold it for.

We are here having a blast while friends back home are still trying to sell because they want their price which they do not seem to be able to justify with any real world numbers. Who is better off? :shrug: We sold our house and found our home!

Vinny, you make alot of excellent points in your post.Help me understand, that you priced the home at $130,000 less than it sold for 2 years ago, but you made a 30% profit because you bought it 8 years ago
:confused: what am i missing.Love your post, you add alot to this message board.

Moved from S Fla. and had the same situation. Take what you can get now. The market will get better, but that may take 5 years or more, and then probably not back to where it was. Our clock is ticking and we only live once so take what you can live with and enjoy the rest of your life here.

Hi wlou,
One more factor to consider is how much it is costing you each month to keep the house you are trying to sell. The mortage interest you continue to pay every month could have gone instead toward selling the house earlier and not making those interest payments.

If you wait another two years to sell your other house, you will be making those house payments for two more years with no guarantee that the market will go up. Many experts do not expect it to.

If I were making up a resolution for you, I might say:

Whereas, you already own your home in Amelia; and
Whereas, you are ready and able to move to Amelia as soon as you sell; and
Whereas it could be costing you as much or more each month to wait out the market as it would cost to reduce the price of your home and sell now; and
Whereas, the market might not recover and then you would make all those additional interest payments and sell low anyway; and
Whereas, life is short and the more time you live it to the fullest the better;
Therefore be it resolved to sell in today's market and COME ON DOWN!

But, I could be wrong.

love it!
 

:laugh:Thanks guys, all the posts are wonderful and we did reduce....Now we wait....

Indy-Guy, We are about to list our house in MA, going round and round, had 3 realtors come in, 50K difference in what the house should list for. As everyone has said here price is everything. We have an appt. Friday for an appraisal with a bank appraiser. Thank you for the suggestion, believe this will give us peace of mind.

What's the point of having a RE agent (at 5-6%) if THEY don't know how to price the market? Heck I could just set a price and keep reducing until it sells. I always hear that you should not sell it yourself since we amateurs price it too high and then it looks like a fire sale when you need to reduce. I'm saving the 6% and price it right from the start when I sell.

But good luck with your sale and see you in TV!

I thought that too. We sold ourselves in CT but in our town there wasn't much inventory. We tried to sell a house in Seattle in 2001 ourselves, and the market was dropping and we had to eventually go with a RE agent. Most people who are serious buyers are working with a RE agent, especially relos. Even if you use one of those flat rate put it in the multilist with 3% to buyers agent guys the realators don't show the house. I guess they disapprove of the practice. They will only show your property if there is no other listings that fit the bill. So my experience is high demand low inventory you are OK to sell it yourself (If you have the skills) High inventory soft market you are in for a long wait for a buyer.

But it does bother me that alot of RE agents have no financial savy, I also end up editing the offer or counter offer because if it isn't in the boiler plate they don't know how to do it. I currently have found an exception to that in our area thank goodness. He not only pulls comps for my house but pulls the overall statistics for the surrounding mile or two and makes a graph to show if prices are falling or rising in our price range. We then use his graph to help with the market value determination. We did this when buying through him and he uses the same process for sellers .

Reply
 

[QUOTE=kentucky blue;271117]Vinny, you make alot of excellent points in your post.Help me understand, that you priced the home at $130,000 less than it sold for 2 years ago, but you made a 30% profit because you bought it 8 years ago
:confused: what am i missing.Love your post, you add alot to this message

Too many meds. :laugh: 2 years ago same homes in our development were sold for $570,000. I put mine on market for $439,999 last September. Sold it 7 months later for $370,000. Bought it 8 years ago for $260,000. Subtract real estate agent commission, closing cost, etc. And i made about 30% I think my math is correct. If not I apologize.

Reason for dramatic increase in value of home is because township bought the farm next to my house and was going make it a golf course. Plans put on hold due to recession but farm zoned for recreational use only.