<p>I am probably alone here in being the poster still living in a red-hot housing bubble (just outside the US though). Well okay, except for another poster a bit above me…who can probably appreciate what I’m talking about. </p>
<p>Tear downs on 33ft by 122ft lots are selling within days for $2-3million (to rebuild upon). Three houses just sold in the past few months on our block. We are told its primarily buyers from mainland China. If only we could cash out…</p>
<p>My area of Wisconsin never had a quick sale market- and our house has been on the market for a year now (upscale, over $300,000 range are never in demand). In the good times 90 days was average time on market- now up to 270 days, for all prices I believe. We never had the huge price jumps in housing costs- never expected to make money on a house. Can’t believe how little you get for how much in some markets…</p>
<p>Best Place to buy a house?</p>
<ol>
<li>SF Bay area and San Diego area. (Weather has a lot to do with it.)</li>
<li>DC area (What “small” government?)</li>
<li>Tempa, FL & Orlando, FL (well, if you are not afraid of hurricane, that is…)</li>
<li>Dallas, TX, Austin TX. (Everything is big in TX, except housing prices.)</li>
<li>Sin City (Play ground of the world.)</li>
</ol>
<p>Places to avoid?</p>
<p>Midwest: MI, ILL, WI, especially. (Where is the job market and where is my driveway? Answer: “What job market?” and “somewhere under the snow.”)</p>
<p>I have several neighbors selling their houses. One at $900K. Sold after 5 years. One initially priced at $800K and sold at $760K after three years. There are still two on the market. One is $799K---->$690K and still waiting. The other priced at $1M and still on the market for over two years. One lawyer put his on the market for 1.5M and took it off after one year. These are all great brick houses less than 10 year old with huge yard. House like these will easily fetch $2M at Los Altos Hills or even Pleasanton, CA, or Fremont CA. A friend of mine at DC owns a similar house which can sell for over $1M for sure.
Well, like it was said in real estate business, there are only three important things to remember: “location, location and locations.”</p>
<p>Just found out our neighbor’s home is going into a short sale… bad for them, bad for the neighborhood and we are very sorry to lose them as neighbors</p>
<p>Short-selling will ruin the value of your house, for a short-term. Well, if folks have $$ to invest, it is a good time to buy, in a good area, that is. QE1 and QE-2 can only make your dollar in the bank become worthless with time.</p>
<p>wis75…so…did you expect it would take this long to sell your place when you put it on the market?</p>
<p>Are you leaving the state?</p>
<p>Well…I was hoping to have my house on the market by Apr1…but that isn’t going to happen.</p>
<p>I need a permit to remodel the master bath…and the guy in charge of that is on vacation.</p>
<p>My wife is a project manager for a real estate developer…and she wrote a timeline on how long each part of getting our house ready was going to take and when. </p>
<p>She missed the vacation part. :)</p>
<p>We have had a few other snags too. I would mention them…but we are still dealing with the town inspectors…and on the one in a million chance they are reading this…I don’t want to pi@@ them off… :)</p>
<p>So yesterday, my wife, daughter and I looked at an apartment to rent while we try to sell the house. We were thinking that we didn’t want to be at the house anymore during the selling process. We actually found a cute apartment and we filled out an application. And then…we changed our mind. I liked the location of the apartment…wasn’t perfect though…and the apartment was small. And even though we have gotten rid of most of our possessions and can fit our possessions in our garage…the apartment does not have a garage and I would have to rent a storage place. Plus…If I don’t rent an apartment…I save money and feel like I can lower the house price if it becomes necessary without losing anything.</p>
<p>The last 7 people who have commented on what they think the house is worth all have come up with the same number. I think that is a lot of people coming up with the same number. Yet…These people are more sure of the price than I am. We are going to advertise the house in some magazine without a price, because I want to wait until the last minute to set the price. I don’t want to have to reduce the sales price…and the price people are suggesting might be a little too high. Maybe. I want to price the house correctly right at the start.</p>
<p>It’s funny…I can see myself getting stubborn about the price I want…Never thought that was going to happen. Hopefully it won’t. I can see emotions coming into the picture.</p>
<p>I do like KXC1961’s list…especially the number 1. :)</p>
<p>dstark, I would recommend that you take a deep gulp, and go with the price that the Realtors are saying. At that price you may very well get multiple offers and get the price you are hoping for. But nothing is worse these days than doing all that work and mental preparation to move, and than have you house sit because you weren’t being realistic about the current market.</p>
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<p>You’re a trader - just think of it as another trade - shouldn’t be a big deal.</p>
<p>For heaven’s sake, don’t be like my in-laws! They put their house on the market three years ago, just when the market in northern VA was beginning its nosedive. They priced it close to the outrageously high assessment from the previous year and wouldn’t budge, against their realtor’s advice, even as the foreclosures started flooding the market. The house was assessed at $500K, and they refused to go below $450K even though the other houses were priced around $420K and below. After all, their house was special because it was on a cul-de-sac, had a big yard, etc. They only owed $83K on their mortgage, so it’s not like they would be taking a loss.</p>
<p>They ended up buying a house in PA and renting the VA house. Now they want to put it on the market again, and don’t have much time to sell it before they lose the capital gains exclusion. If they had just dropped their price to about $10K below the other houses three years ago, it would have sold quickly. It’s now assessed at $325K.</p>
<p>I must be giving the wrong impression. :)</p>
<p>Others want to price my house a little higher than I expected. I am wondering if I am wrong. There aren’t a lot of homes selling right now.</p>
<p>I don’t want to price the house too high initially, then have to mark down the price…I think a seller ends up with a lower price that way…and it also takes longer to sell. </p>
<p>I am just talking about the process of selling a home and my thoughts. I think other home sellers understand. I am going to do my best to not do something stupid. :)</p>
<p>"The house was assessed at $500K, and they refused to go below $450K even though the other houses were priced around $420K and below. After all, their house was special because it was on a cul-de-sac, had a big yard, etc. They only owed $83K on their mortgage, so it’s not like they would be taking a loss.</p>
<p>They ended up buying a house in PA and renting the VA house. Now they want to put it on the market again, and don’t have much time to sell it before they lose the capital gains exclusion. If they had just dropped their price to about $10K below the other houses three years ago, it would have sold quickly. It’s now assessed at $325K. "</p>
<p>Yeah…that stinks…</p>
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<p>What I don’t get is that the R’s and the TPer’s don’t see that the fall in housing/real property is a tax on the homeowning middle and upperclass.</p>
<p>The heck to tax cuts and budget balancing. You can cut the tax to zero, and the losses in home/property equity will dwarf anything that That crowd could do.</p>
<p>dstark, I understand your hesitation about pricing the house higher than you think is right, but if seven different realtors said the same thing, I’d go with that price – maybe $10,000 or $15,000 less, but pretty darn close. They have much more information than you do.</p>
<p>I’ve had three realtors come to see my house and I’ve gotten three different prices. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I have a few more months than you do. My target date is June 1.</p>
<p>The painter is doing the three bathrooms today and tomorrow.</p>
<p>VeryHappy - I’m a Realtor. I’m interested at how different the prices you received were. I’d ask to see the comps that they each used to come up with a price. You can quickly gauge which homes you think are more comparable to yours. And if they can’t tell you what they used to come up with a price, I would have some doubts.</p>
<p>One of my local agents sends out a link to a canned report every month. It has statistics for the county and for all cities/towns in the county. I’m south of San Francisco, so a slightly different market from dstark (if all real estate is local, that goes double for the Bay Area). What matters most in my town is the elementary school district. The districts cross city lines; those houses in the less desirable district sell for less $$s for the same square footage.</p>
<p>My sense is that inventory is very low. I think reasons for that are several; banks are delaying foreclosures and short sales, homeowners are keeping their homes off the market in hopes of rising prices later, and the seasonal depression in activity around the Christmas holidays.</p>
<p>My town suffers (or benefits, depending on your point of view) from the Google effect, which is the demand for housing close to the Googleplex from newly-minted Google millionaires. In addition, the town is 100% built out, there’s no additional land for new housing. As a result, houses sell fairly quickly here especially if priced well. The number below shows sale price vs list price as close to 100%. In better days the sale prices were commonly bid up, and savvy agents would deliberately price houses low in order to encourage bidding wars. That doesn’t happen so much these days.</p>
<p>I think that prices have come down approx 20% from their peak in 2007, not a happy number but certainly better than many parts of California, such as the Central Valley, where 50% reductions are common.</p>
<p>Days on market are interesting because there have been some outliers that have helped to raise the average quite a bit. It’s not uncommon for houses to hit the market on Wednesday, broker tour on Friday, open house on Sunday, and offers taken the following Tuesday.</p>
<p>zillow prices are regarded as fiction in my area.</p>
<p>I’ll be putting my house on the market at the end of this year, so I’m very interested in following this thread.</p>
<p>These are the stats for my town:</p>
<p>Trends At a Glance Feb 2011 Previous Month Year-over Year
Median Price $1,632,500 $1,450,000 (+12.6%) $1,640,000 (-0.5%)
Average Price $1,782,910 $1,463,890 (+21.8%) $1,708,580 (+4.4%)
No. of Sales 12 9 (+33.3%) 17 (-29.4%)
Pending Properties 27 18 (+50.0%) 32 (-15.6%)
Active 47 38 (+23.7%) 61 (-23.0%)
Sale vs. List Price 100.3% 98.7% (+1.6%) 100.3% (0.0%)
Days on Market 53 44 (+20.4%) 56 (-3.8%)</p>
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<p>Are there a lot of those? Google has been in a trading range for the last three years.</p>
<p>Google has nearly doubled in the past 2 years. Young families, including a couple in my neighborhood, have benefited from Google’s generous salaries and stock options.</p>
<p>[Google</a> Inc. Stock Chart | GOOG Interactive Chart - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“GOOG Interactive Stock Chart | Alphabet Inc. Stock - Yahoo Finance”>GOOG Interactive Stock Chart | Alphabet Inc. Stock - Yahoo Finance)</p>
<p>Google was $425 three years ago. It’s under $600 today. If you were hired in late 2009 when it was $250, then you’re doing well. If you were hired in late 2007 when it was $750, not so much. You can make an argument if you can pick your timeframe but usually those looking for a job can’t do that perfectly unless they can predict the future.</p>
<p>Google allowed employees whose stock options were underwater to exchange them one-for-one with new options at a very favorable price, near the all-time low. Those who took Google up on this offer have doubled their money, even those hired in 2007.</p>