Selling a House

I’m thinking of selling my house at a loss of 15-20K so I can pick up a better one at a depressed price right now. If, worst case, I lose 20K, I still walk with 20K to put down on another house.

I spent 135K and dumped another 35K of improvements into a 1920 craftsman bungalow in the first year. Over the last 4 years the crime rate has increase and renters are moving into the area, so the houses around mine are looking worse and everyone around here is pretty scuzzy now. My decent neighbors have all moved out of the neighborhood, and I bought an alarm system and a shotgun.

I’m thinking that on one of those depressed price homes in a better neighborhood, I could at least recover my loss if not make a few bucks once the housing market rebounds.

If it’s a buyers market, I should be able to drive as hard a bargain on my purchase as the buyer of my house no doubt will. I’m looking at a brand new condo, built in 2007 never sold, price a year ago was 279K, now it’s listed at 249K.

If anyone is in real estate, I’d like to hear your take on the situation, because the agents I talk to here have an financial incentive to feed me BS because they are starving right now.

Any advice on negotiations with agents and or buyers? My dad thinks I can negotiate real estate commissions too, but I don’t know if you can here. Any truth to that?

I don’t sell real estate but my mom does fwiw. I do however follow the market and am currently in my 5th home.

I would expected much more than a 30K drop on a condo that hasn’t sold in a year in this market. Are there other units languishing? You should be able to pull comps for the area.

Also, you may not get as much as you think for your present home. It is really up and down as far as declining values according to the area your in. It sounds like now is a good time to get out though if the area is seriously declining.

I did negotiate a lower commission on my last house, dropping from 6% to 4%. However, I knew the agent and he already had a list of people looking for affordable lakefront. The house sold in one day for full asking price. Also, since I was buying the house I am currently in from my in-laws, I used that agent to write up the paperwork for a flat $400 fee.

HTH

DO NOT BUY CONDOS…DO NOT BUY CONDOS.

They have been and always will be over priced headaches at best and pieces of shit at worst.

I could list all kinds of reasons but the number one is that they are hard to sell and don’t appreciate in value as much as an actual home.

FFS why buy an apartment…you love hearing your neighbors sneeze, fornicate, fight, and smell their shitty food?

EDIT:

If you are dead set on this condo offer them 150k for it. When they refuse say, “ok my offer stands for the month but if you call me later wanting me to buy because you finally realise your carrying costs are butt fucking you, my offer will be lower”. This should at least cause them to ponder your offer a little more seriously and if not fuck 'em.

I agree with Beefy. I am on the coast in FL where unsold/short-sale/foreclosed condos are the norm. Woey the condo owner.

I disagree about condos, if you do decide to buy a condo get a smoking price. We have condos selling for millions of dollars.