Not a sellers market

I'm finding out first hand that it's not a good time to sell a home.

Our house has been listed for three months. During that period, the realtor held three open houses that were attended twice by no one and once by neighbors down the road who wanted to see what the inside of our house looked like. Other than that, it's only been shown once. Even being on the multiple listing service and sites such as Realtor.com and Trulia is getting us no showings, even from other realtors.

We're not trying to get rich from the sale, we just want to sell the house. It is only five years old, and after lowering the price twice, we are only asking a couple thousand dollars more than we paid to have it built.

I'm starting to think Sushi will find a job outside of sales and find a buyer for his Crown Vic before my house sells!

The realtor wants to know if we're going to sign on with her for three more months... it doesn't seem to be anything she's doing wrong, but more of a slow market with no traffic.
If anyone has any other ideas, bring them on!

It took us 4 months to sell our house & 37 acres in Georgia last year. We did list it too high initially, and had to drop the price twice to the tune of $34,000 total, but we had lived there 9 years, and I built it myself, and were fortunate to have substantial equity to play with. Anyway, we had a buyer within days of the second price drop. Fast forward 9 months later, and folks back home are telling me it's taking 9 months or more to sell existing homes. I think we have all become spoiled in our expectations for a fast sale because of the real estate boom in the last few years. 10-15 years ago, most homes were regularly taking around 6-months or longer to sell, except maybe in places like California.

Hang in there and wait a while. A buyer WILL come along - there's just not as many qualified buyers right now because of the mortgage lender problem and tightening standards for qualification for mortgages. It might take several more months. If you are in a hurry, you will take a big hit on the price; but if you can ride it out a while, your buyer will come.

AndyM said:

I'm finding out first hand that it's not a good time to sell a home.

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Looks like I will be selling my California place in the next year or so and I am seeing the same thing here .

I just about decided to hold on to it and just lease it out with maybe a buy option added . There are not a lot of high dollar homes selling right now in our area . Theres no way I can get a proper rental return based on the house's value but maybe if I apply some of the lease payments toward the downpayment it may sell faster . I also plan to carry all the paper since its paid for . I figure I might as well make a little interest money too .

Sorry to hear that Andy. My daughter and her husband are in the same pickle. He taken a new job and they'll be moving. They met with a super realator who would have a special web site with their home address as the web site, virtual tour and a specail phone number also keyed on their address. Sounded like a super realator. But he also told them about the hit in price on what they paid vs what they could reasonably expect to sell for. Not a pretty picture.
Just yesterday i heard that they are considering renting the place for a year or two and hoping the market rebounds a little. It scares me to even consider renting, but it's a relative they will rent to, so maybe that helps ... but me being me, that part scares me too.

AndyM said:

During that period, the realtor held three open houses that were attended twice by no one ...

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Open houses aren't a great idea for selling your home -- but it's a great way for the Realtor to obtain new clients that are looking to buy.

Tell the Realtor not to hold anymore of those -- it's just a hassle on your end, for you have to roam around the neighborhood for hours, wasting your time.

AndyM said:

The realtor wants to know if we're going to sign on with her for three more months... it doesn't seem to be anything she's doing wrong, but more of a slow market with no traffic.
If anyone has any other ideas, bring them on!

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Change agents. She might not be doing anything wrong, but certainly isn't doing anything right either. A new face, a new sign and a new set of contacts might shake things up a little.

When we sold our house five years ago, we had it listed for almost six months (while carrying two mortgages ) and sold it in two weeks after switching agents.

Doc said:

It scares me to even consider renting, but it's a relative they will rent to, so maybe that helps ... but me being me, that part scares me too.

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I'd rather rent to the Drunk Crack Whores Local #273 than rent to family.

I second the changing of agents thing. Keep changing them every three months.

If an agent can't sell the home in three months they will stop trying.

I agree with GB - open houses don't seem very effective to me either.

I agree, change agents!! You will never know if your current agent actually is doing everything right until you shop the realtor market and see what other agents have to offer.

DaveNay said:

I'd rather rent to the Drunk Crack Whores Local #273 than rent to family.

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We will be renting to my husband's step-father. I promise, he is a good and responsible guy! We are making renter's insurance mandatory, he is signing a lease and we know he is trustworthy. Hopefully, in our case, hind site won't be 20/20

Gatorboy said:

Open houses aren't a great idea for selling your home -- but it's a great way for the Realtor to obtain new clients that are looking to buy.

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Thanks for pointing out the problem... would you like to help me with a suggestion for a solution?

Gatorboy said:

Tell the Realtor not to hold anymore of those...

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Statistically speaking, you are correct, they don't work. But that's how we sold our last house. Then again, we sold our last house ourselves. If I had more time, I'd consider doing it again, but right now I'm driving 54 miles each way to work and had two children under eight months old factoring into that decision... so for the time being, I'm giving the realtor 30 more days while I figure things out.

Still trying to sell our house...
The current media frenzy and government intervention in the economy isn't helping to bring buyers this way.
I don't want to give it away, but am ready to make a deal... SOON!

Andy, no advice from me. I'm simply at a loss. I was talking to a mutual fund manager today, the topic moved to real estate and we both pretty much felt that nationally houses will drop about 20% in value. Some regions will get hit with 40% or more drops while the midwest, which never took big gains probably won't take big losses. Still its just a really soft market out there and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon.

Have you considered a St Joseph statue?

B_Skurka said:

Have you considered a St Joseph statue?

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I've had others suggest it to me... does it work for non-Catholics?
I guess I'll try anything at this point...

I just don't get it...
It's a 5 year old house on 3.6 acres, built back 250 feet from the road. It's only 1200 feet away from a lake with no horsepower restrictions, and walking distance to a state park and the bank, post office, restaurants, etc. We're on our second realtor since March. I would have been happy breaking even with what it cost to build, but at this point I'm ready to move on... I've been working in the next state over since January and it's time to establish connections in that community. We've found a house we like but can't get stuck with two mortgages!

That's a mighty fine piece of real estate you two have there.



Oh yeah I saw it in real life, but it looks better without the duck pond around the tree

The Waltons come to mind

Ok i have to be rude here....whats a property like that going for at the moment??come on let me dream away here in the UK.

Galvatron said:

<snip>
whats a property like that going for at the moment??
<snip>

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I think that's the point...it ain't!!!


sorry about that right there Mr. M

Bobcat said:

I think that's the point...it ain't!!!


sorry about that right there Mr. M

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smart ass

It's a beautiful home. I got to stop in and say hello to Andy and Mrs. AndyM. Around here it might bring $300K. That's based on values before this whole housing mess started though.

Galvatron said:

Ok i have to be rude here....whats a property like that going for at the moment??come on let me dream away here in the UK.

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Probably could have had at least $220,000 (£124,600) two or three years ago.
We're currently asking $184,900 (£104,600). What does a house like this go for over there?

Here's an aerial view from the internet...

AndyM said:

Probably could have had at least $220,000 (£124,600) two or three years ago.
We're currently asking $184,900 (£104,600). What does a house like this go for over there?

Here's an aerial view from the internet...

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The starting price for something like that where i am in the UK would be in the region of £800,000.....when its converted to dollar thats a lot as you full well know.
Prices here are way over the top even my house which i would say is average is worth the £200,000.....but all that is set to change as prices are declining with the market slowing.

Good luck Andy.

Just for the fun of it, we looked at Real Estate prices when we were in London and York. YIKES. I can't figure out how people can afford to buy a place over there. I was talking to a cabbie in Edinburgh and he said he had to drive about 20 miles out of the city to get an affordable house, said it was about £220,000 (about $400,000) for a typical house with 3 bedrooms on a small lot where he lived.

AndyM said:

Probably could have had at least $220,000 (£124,600) two or three years ago.
We're currently asking $184,900 (£104,600). What does a house like this go for over there?

Here's an aerial view from the internet...

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What program did you use to get that great picture?

here is a link to a typical house in my town....no land just a yard and the yard is small at that.....these houses are nothing compared to Andy's and yet the price is stupid.

just look at the size of the rooms and you will see what i mean....might aswell live in a shoe box....and then there is the fact they are crammed on housing estates so if you like to be a private person like me there is no hope.

check it out for yourselves.....

http://www.homes24.co.uk/doc.html?_a=view&id=554842

Andy

To some extent I feel your pain, and I wish you sincere luck in finding a buyer.

When I met my future wife here in N.C, she owned a home in a nice little development. She however is from rural Vermont (she had been in N.C for only 3 years before I met her) and I always swore if I owned a home (never had before in 38 years) I would be able to shoot off my back porch, and pee anywhere I please.

This was about 5 years ago.

So, we went looking. Do we sell then buy, or buy then sell?

Well, we found a "perfect" home. More than enough room for us, and a finished basement for my father if he wanted to live with us in the future, and an option to buy additional land around the house.

We ended up only moving about 12 miles, but worlds apart.

So...

We bought the house with 8 acres with the condition if we sold our other house within a year, we had the option of buying the remaining land (which we wanted to do).

We sold our old house in less than two weeks. Very last week when we were supposed to close on the house, the buyer backed out (this after we took the house off the market).

House #1 back on the market.

Two months go by and I end up going to the hospital because I feel like I might be having a heart attack.

Apparently having two house payments can cause stress.

LUCKILY, the third month the house sells, final deal, and we use our option to buy the rest of the land. Keep in mind, we were lucky, but my wife "planned it" when she bought the house. The house we sold was in a culdasack (sp?) and although it was a nice house, it was in the lower price range of an "expensive" development and also had a 1/2 acre lot. So, someone got to pay on the lower end of the scale for a "nice" house in an very nice development.

Now, these past two years, I've seen homes sit on the market in my area for over a year without a sale. What I find ironic is that it seems like land pricing has gone through the roof. Heck, the houses won't sell, but seems the asking price for an acre of land around me is over 8 times what we paid for ours 5 years ago.

The only words of wisdom I can offer is that things work out for a reason, and although you may not realize it at the time, THERE is a reason.

Passingtime2 said:

What program did you use to get that great picture?

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Microsoft Live Search maps

After seven months on the market, I'm looking to drop our second real estate agent and list our house ourselves. We sold our previous home on our own, but now with two small children and an out of state job, I didn't think I had the time to handle it. Even though the house is listed at less than it cost to build, I could probably drop the price another $10,000 or so if we didn't have a 6 percent commission to pay out.

When we sold our last house in 2002, we didn't use any internet advertising. Things have changed since then, as I'm pretty sure the internet is now the primary way to search for a house. There are many for sale by owner websites, and each one claims to be the biggest and best. Does anyone here have any experience as to which one is the right one to choose?

Andy,

Do you have a lot of traffic that goes past your place? If you going to try it on your own get one of them kits that they can set their AM Radio to a special frequency and it tells them a lot about your house. That may eliminate a lot of nuisance calls.


murph

AndyM said:

Microsoft Live Search maps

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Thanks a lot....and Good Luck with your house.

thcri said:

Andy,

Do you have a lot of traffic that goes past your place? If you going to try it on your own get one of them kits that they can set their AM Radio to a special frequency and it tells them a lot about your house. That may eliminate a lot of nuisance calls.

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When we sold our last home in 2002, I put a piece of PVC pipe on top of the for sale sign with flyers I printed. Not only did I give a good description, but also used several photos by printing the flyers on legal-sized paper. This gave anyone who might have been interested a good overview before they called.

After realizing tonight that the listing expires in a couple days, I started on our flyer for this house. I think it turned out pretty good, considering my lack of real estate marketing background (I've only sold one house ever). The other thing I used before was a high-quality For Sale sign instead of some cheap 59 cent one, and used large adhesive numbers instead of a sharpie to put the phone number on the sign.

I just need a way now to get it out there on the internet. There are many "flat-fee" real estate brokers out there who will list your house on the MLS for between $399 and $999, so long as you do the rest of the work and the showing yourself (and provided you offer a small commission to any buyer's agents who may wish to show it). I'm considering going that route, at least to be able to get it on the MLS and sites like Realtor.com. I'm still doing my homework on this.

Been taking a breather on the home-selling attempts during the Christmas season, other than a For Sale By Owner sign out front and a tube with some flyers in it mounted on top. I also have had it on a few free sites on the internet, including craigslist. During this time, I've had some emails and calls from people, mostly either wanting to know if I will do owner financing or rent-to-own, or feeling me out to see how desperate I was to lower the price to the point of giving it away.

Now that we're in the new year, people are looking towards Spring to move and interest rates are lower than ever, I'm hopeful things will pick up some. I'm also studying my next marketing moves to make.

Today I was contacted by a realtor who saw the sign out front and is trying his best to sell me into listing with him. He's sounds very aggressive, but I just didn't agree with some of the things he said. I asked him if he was so sure he could get buyers for it in a matter of days or weeks then how come he didn't show it when it was listed before? He said he didn't show it because he didn't have the listing and wouldn't get as much commission for it. That makes it sound like that he purposely doesn't show houses that may fit a buyer's criteria simply because it doesn't benefit him as much. If he's not representing the buyers he is working with, then is he fully representing the sellers he is working with? The more I talked to him on the phone, I realized that I will have more questions when he comes over to "sell" his services to us. He will need to say a lot of the right things to convince me to list with him, that's for sure. If that doesn't work out, I'll stay with the For Sale By Owner route until I come up with something better.



We have also been looking at a couple of houses in the area we will be moving to. One that we really liked sold in a matter of days and had multiple offers for more than the asking price. The other one was bought sight-unseen by someone in California and is flying in to pay for it and close on the sale. Very perplexing in this market.