<p>Yeah…I understand…</p>
<p>Personal preferences…</p>
<p>I can see in some of my friends’ eyes…they can’t believe I chose to live in this apt. Lol</p>
<p>A couple of friends say, “So? When are you moving again?” :)</p>
<p>What I am doing is definitely not for everyone.</p>
<p>Good timing that this thread popped up again … I have a long story about potential buyers that I won’t bore you with, but just yesterday we received a Purchase Contract for our house. (It’s their 3rd offer; the first 2 were full of “games” which we wanted no part of.) So, here’s hoping it all works out so we can stop being property barons and get on with moving to our new location. We’ve only been in the house 5 years and won’t be making anything on the sale, but we accept that. We tripled our money on the previous house, so we’re still ahead. Oh, the prospective buyers are Asian – and I guess our mirrors are all in the right places!</p>
<p>FauxNom, oh, wow. Your situation is unbelievable. As BunsenBurner said, she’s really hurting herself when she hurts your prospects. Not very bright. I’m glad your agent had a talk with her - let’s hope it works.</p>
<p>Dstark, don’t you have to buy within a certain amount of time? I’d always heard that if you sell a house, you have to pay tax on the gain unless you buy another house within 2 years. But glad you’re enjoying the rest.</p>
<p>Hayden…the rules have been changed…</p>
<p>As far as capital gains goes…if you make over $500,000 on the house sale…you owe a capital gains tax on the amount over $500,000. It doesn’t matter what you do after you sell the house. And it gets a little more complicated if you made money on prior house sales and never paid the capital gains tax on those gains. Those gains are added to the gain in your present house to figure if the gains are over $500,000.</p>
<p>So if you have made $600,000 on your house or all your houses and those gains have never been taxed, you would owe a capital gains tax on $100,000. Your first $500,000 of gains are not taxed. I am talking federal taxes. And you get to deduct from your gains…selling expenses and capital improvements like new floors or a new roof.</p>
<p>In California, in certain counties, …if you or your spouse are 55 or older, you can roll your property taxes as long as you buy a cheaper house than the one you are selling. You have two years to buy a house after you sell one to do this. You can do this only one time.</p>
<p>So…If you are paying $5,000 a year in property taxes…and you sell your house…and buy a cheaper house…you can roll your previous property tax into your new house. So, if your property tax would be more than $5,000 with your new place…you can choose to pay $5,000 instead.</p>
<p>I think this is prop 60. If you are not in Cal…I don’t know what the property tax rules are…:)</p>
<p>Here we go…</p>
<p>[Proposition</a> 60; Proposition 90](<a href=“http://www.wwlaw.com/prop60.htm]Proposition”>http://www.wwlaw.com/prop60.htm)</p>
<p>CBBBlinker, good luck.</p>
<p>Am about to do a very big price reduction on my dads house :(</p>
<p>jym626- I feel your pain. I had to sell 3 houses in the last three years, one of which was in Florida and took substantial reductions on all three. All three homes were estate sales and we just needed to move them on. It was really hard emotionally to realize that others did not see the charm that we did.</p>
<p>Congrats, CBBBlinker! </p>
<p>We are still on the market; no one has been through the house in over a week. We knew this could happen as we are not the center-hall Colonial so many are looking for. (When we bought this place it had been on the market for over a year.) I’m not feeling too badly about it as I especially love this house in the summer and the ***** may be hitting the fan with my elderly parents. I’d rather not deal with moving two households simultaneously and I’d like to have the option of bringing them here if that seems best.</p>
<p>We have our mom’s house in FL to sell. It has been on the market for 3 years…and house prices keep dropping and dropping. It is now valued at half what it was 5 years ago…hard to stomach. But we have tenants and their rent is almost covering our costs, so we are just waiting. For what I don’t know. Prices are not going to go up to the 2005 dizzying heights.</p>
<p>That’s awful, fauxnom. And ditto onwardmom, cayuga and 1moremom. This market is awful. Am hoping to get an application in to get the tax (which is high) reduced since its based on an estimated value that is much higher than its currently worth :(</p>
<p>Way to go blinker!</p>
<p>Thanks for the condolences 
I hate the phrase “get a life”, but it really applies to this neighbor of mine. We’ve been pretty good at ignoring her, but prospective buyers are never going to choose to be next to a known busybody/meddler/preachy type. </p>
<p>I’m torn about whether to challenge our prop tax valuation; on the one hand, it’s demonstrably too high, but on the other hand, some buyers actually look at the assessed value in their own value assessments.</p>
<p>FauxNom, I asked an agent about that and she believes buyers are looking at property taxes strictly as an expense they’ll need to cover, not as an indicator of what a property is worth.</p>
<p>We just listed out house on Monday. We may have been a few weeks too late since 3 houses in our price range have sold in the last month. I wil miss my shower jets and gorgeous professional kitchen, but I will not miss my snobby self-entitled neighbors.</p>
<p>kmkord, we must live close by. I have the same neighbors. ;)</p>
<p>Would you rather have my white-trash neighbors who never mow and leave all their junk outside? Maybe we could have a 3 way trade where my neighbors end up next to your neighbors? That could be amusing… :)</p>
<p>Bumping up this thread, so see how the home sellers are doing.</p>
<p>My neighbors, who have not returned fully to the house since Katrina, have finally cleared out the house and put it up for sale.</p>
<p>The sign says, Short sale.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what this is and if/how the rules are different for this type of sale over a regular sale?</p>
<p>Most curious about whether inspections will need to be done for the sale to go through. I’m sure that would hold up a sale. Was wondering if a short sale meant those things aren’t necessary.</p>
<p>The nice house on the corner is still for sale. She dropped her price from 235 to 223, 5, but has stayed there for over a month. Lots of other houses priced under 200K in the neighborhood, but not nearly in as good kitchen. She doesn’t have a fancy kitchen or bathroom, though, so I doubt it will go very fast, despite the good upkeep.</p>
<p>A short sale is when the seling priceis below the amount left on the mortgage (ie the amount the seller will get falls “short” of the balance due onteh loan. The lender has to be willing to accept this lower price, as they usually forgive the balance left on the loan.</p>
<p>Oops - cross posted with jym…
Short sale should really be called “long sale”. It means that the sellers are trying to avoid foreclosure by selling the house for an amount short of what they owe the bank. They can accept an offer, but the sale won’t go through until the lender signs off on it and says “go ahead and sell for this price, we take it all, and we won’t go after you for the shortfall on your mortgage”. Lenders often take a long time to sign off, and most deals are set up so the buyer can back out if they get tired of waiting. The buyer can still ask for an inspection, and the buyer’s lender would still have the normal requirements for appraisals and such.</p>
<p>Our neighbors finally sold their house after having it on the market over a year. They put it on too high, waited, waited, waited…dropped the price, changed realtors, then dropped it again. Finally sold at the same price a buyer had offered them 1.5 years ago.</p>
<p>They’re very well off (this is one of three homes) so I don’t think the cost of waiting affected them, but I think in this market, pricing the house right at the outset is huge. The only time I was involved in selling a house, the houses on either side of us had been on the market for over 6 months.*</p>
<p>I chose to price our house (and they were all 3 BR, 2.5 bath homes with same size yard, etc.) $10K BELOW the list price of our neighbors. And guess what? We got 2 offers the day of the open house – both at the asking price, one with a financing contingency, one without. I went with the one without the contingency.</p>
<p>*Come to think of it, where we live now, the neighbors on either side of us are moving. You think it’s me?</p>
<p>We got are property reassessment and it’s 20% below the peak and what it was before. I still think that it’s a little high but at least it is now far more realistic. Unemployment is around 4.8% in our state and it’s dropped below 8% in neighboring MA so that’s probably slowing the decline of housing prices.</p>
<p>The Fed was non-committal yesterday on further stimulus but acknowledged that things are going as well as expected. I think that prices will decline further in the current fiscal and monetary environment.</p>
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<p>Are you snobby and self-entitled? White trash?</p>