Large houses hard to sell now?

We left our house with the first floor master for a multistory house. Probably not the best idea as we are getting older but we talked through adding a chair lift to the stairs if necessary and the doorways are very wide. We also have a third floor bedroom and bath that would be perfect for live in help.

We had a second home in SC, which we have since sold, and it was unusual to find a home there without an elevator.

To me, 3000 or more sf qualifies as a large house. Once our nest emptied we intended to downsize from 5200 to about half that. Then we stumbled upon an opportunity we couldn’t pass up: a bank owned, partially completed, 5000 sf waterfront home. We were able to finish it just the way we wanted including two master bedrooms, one upstairs for now, and another on the main floor for later.

“We had a second home in SC, which we have since sold, and it was unusual to find a home there without an elevator.”

I have tons of family in SC and none of them - or their friends - have elevators. :slight_smile:

We looked at a house with a real elevator. The city required annual inspection and maintenance of the thing… to the tune of… wait for it… close to a grand. Nope! :slight_smile:

We also looked at a house that had a hydraulic platform in the 2 car garage - to lower one of your cars into the car vault where you can store 2 more cars… again, annual inspections were needed. We passed.

The “smarter” the house, the more maintenance it needs and the dumber it becomes as the tech gets obsolete.

Happy with my dumb house. We now only do: boiler check (hired), backflow valve check (has to be by a pro), smoke and CO alarm check, window wash, and… I guess that is it for annual maintenance. Other stuff is done as needed, like roof cleaning.

@emilybee - the airbnb is a great idea. I will say that some of the nearby towns (we have a new town every two - three miles along our coast) are trying to restrict the use of large, single-family homes for such purposes, however. I haven’t looked in our particular area. That had been dh’s thought all along - we’ll just rent a house if ds ever has a family. Time will tell! Still waiting for ds to date someone, so there is hardly any urgency!

This has always been dh’s point - why maintain space that is used only a couple of times per year? I realize some people use all the rooms in their homes. We did not.

I also have a friend nearing 60 who added onto her 4,000 sq ft home. She has three daughters, two of whom have married, and one of those has two children now. It’s very important to her that everyone be able to stay together at her home for holidays. Everyone should have what they want! We just felt our house (even though it was paid off) was going to be a financial suck going forward. More to heat, cool, clean, yard, etc. Of course, we do have a condo association fee here as well, so it isn’t as though those costs go away. But, it isn’t us having to micromanage so many upkeep issues. And, with a much smaller footprint, a lot of those costs have gone down. We no longer have a cleaning person either.

A friend bought a house with an elevator. It worked, or so they were told. But they should have had a separate elevator inspection during the inspection process. Turns out it has some kind of atypical engine size that would cost $30,000 to replace, and it needs to be replaced! They can’t use it but they keep hoping they’ll find someone who can fix the old engine.

^^^^Yikes. We have ours serviced every year or just a little over. Costs $300, never has needed any repairs, knock wood. I seriously doubt our next house will have one as they are pretty uncommon here. As stated before, the developer of our neighborhood designed the zero lot lines specifically with older buyers in mind, and since most master bedrooms are upstairs to exploit the views, the elevators were probably seen as a prudent idea. So I get it.

I have a good friend who built a very nice lake front house. Plans included an elevator. He has 4 sons (all were under 14 at the time). He figured they would break it if it was actually installed. So the shaft exists for one to be installed later. Don’t expect to need to use it until their kids are all out of the house. So then the grandkids will be able to break it. :slight_smile:

Our elevator hasn’t required much maintenance. We replaced the back-up battery once and did a DIY project installing baffles on each door to narrow the space between the regular door and the cage door. We were within a fraction of an inch of the new code but chose to go ahead with the update instead of waiting until we sell the house.

I’ve seen coastal houses with elevators in areas where prices start under $500K. A while back, dh tried to talk me into a land purchase where the house would have to be built on stilts or pilings, similar to those along the beach. I love our elevator, but I also appreciate that I can come and go without it.

In resort areas like HH, every house we looked at that was more than one storey had an elevator. It is common there, I suppose, because there are many retirees.

To be honest, I never used it myself. I’d put groceries in it from the garage which was under the house, and then pushed the button in the kitchen to bring them upstairs. Same when we had guests who arrived with luggage to go to the second floor. I never felt comfortable being in it myself but I’m not fond of elevators, in general.

We had it service annually for a couple hundred dollars and never had any issues with it.

Ha ha, ditto. I use it most often for sending up heavy boxes of kitty litter.

I’d love to hear more about whether large houses are hard to sell in your neighborhood.

A 5,000 sft house would be a relatively hard sell 20-25 miles south or north of Seattle in places like Monroe or Auburn.

5,000 sft house in Bellevue or Redmond - as long as it is not in a terrible, outdated shape - will move.

There are lots of tear-downs in the close-in DC burbs. These turn into 4000 sq ft mini-mansions that go for $1.2m and up. They sell very quickly these days, as folks are trying to avoid the terrible commute/difficult Metro service in the area.

It’s the new tax legislation. If your property taxes are over 10K you are screwed b/c you cannot deduct them from your federal tax bill. I am seeing a sea of “for sale” signs for high-end houses in my area (suburban NYC). High-tax states’ spending cannot be offset anymore by federal deductions. If you own a house that is not more that 10K in property taxes annually, you are OK. Trump rightly figured that no one is going to get teary eyed over the plight of upper-middle-class property owners who can’t pay their taxes on their McMansions.

PS I am not gloating. We pay exactly 10K in taxes on our very ordinary 1960s ranch house. It’s going to hurt in coming years and it will be a factor in our decision to stay here or bail.

The new tax code has definitely impacted the market in terms of stemming high appreciation in our area, but homes are still selling if they are priced right.

I am sure tax affects the market but I don’t notice that in my neighborhood. I have the smallest house and my tax is over $20K. I see houses selling quickly these days.

^our neighborhood is the same…the SALT limits aren’t affecting the sale of 5000+ sf houses. There is more to house purchase decisions than just the tax deduction. And if you can afford a $1.2m and up home the deduction reduction is disappointing but tax and mortgage interest deductions phased out at higher income levels under the old tax laws so the real implications of the SALT cap maybe more nuanced for some buyers.

Low taxes don’t help the sale of large houses in our area. Houses of 5K - 8K SF that are assessed over $1MM typically have property taxes of about $5K - $7K/yr. When such houses sell, and some have been taken off the market after a year or longer, they usually go for much less than they sold for 12 to 15 years ago.