Need to sell my home in the WORST way! (Post Falls: renters, lofts)

[twinprism]

ScGranny,

I can't speak for N. Idaho or even the Boise area, but home didn't get that inflated in SE Idaho (excluding the Victor/Driggs area across from Jackson, Wyoming) Of course, we have less of the the all-inclusive subdivision style developments, but I like that, it makes getting around easier. To each their own I guess.

$380,000 will buy you a 4,000-5,000 square foot home here, A similar home to what you describe may go for $250,000-$300,000 in the nicest areas of town. We are within 2-3 hours of Sun Valley, Jackson, or Salt Lake City. And have world class hiking, biking, fishing, hunting and such less than an hour from most towns, and some much closer than that.

Not that I want more people to move here, but I like it here, and I though I'd throw it out for comparison.

[quadracer111]

WOW, good stuff guys! Sorry I think my IP address is Block from this website at home so I have to come to my moms to get on this site...Wierd huh!

Ok so let me answer some questions first then I will elaborate a little more I suppose! i AM NOT SURE IF i HAVE ANY PICSTURES OF MY HOUSE ON THIS COMPUTER But i will see so I can post a couple(sorry this keyboard sucks that I am useing so hang in there!)

TopKnot-I have dropped it twice doing bonus already, infact i have also given a 5,000 dollar furniture bonus also and a extra 1% to the seller! NO LUCK!!!!

SCGranny- You are SO right on the key its not even a joke!~ WE ARE WAY OVER PRICED. 2 years/maybe 3 is when we hit our boom. We went from lots(.19 acre) priced at about 30k, to lots being about 85K and you had to have a builder in order to purchase! It was really weird but it happened! I had 6 friends ALL go through the SAME thing when the boom hit. On top of that the builders WOULD NOT let them pick out ANYTHING except for the color of the interior walls! NO JOKE. They all had different builders also! It was a sellers market! Now all of those builders that did that are pretty much Chapter 13 now because they forgot what it REALLY takes to survive in this area.

thebigr-I was at the right place at the right time. Both my brother and i wanted to do another investment home so we got this one, well i should say we built this one! It will be worth it in the long run I hope, considering I was needing to be moved away from here 2 years ago! My financial position now is suffering now from this house that is for sure! OOPS!!!

Like i said if it doesnt do well by lets say the 1st of the year, I will pull it. Then mark the price back up and try that. My RE agent refuses to do it, so I see a new agent in the future if it comes down to it. It just seems like Real Estate Rullet(sp?)

PICS...

[quadracer111]

Now the houses you see BEHIND mine are going for 1.5million and up. That road connects to mine right around the corner(to the right in the picture). So it is not like I am too high in price! LIke I said we have a large spread of price range on our block. It really all just comes down to what it has for upgrades and square footage. I have plenty more pictures. I just pulled these off of my Agents website. I didnt even go to Homes and Land!

[AkMiller]

First I would try more advertising. Maybe a different realtor.

Next I hate to say it but if it hasent sold it is overpriced.

But try Number one first.

[Sharon06]

This is what I tell people who list with me and are about to lose the house. Drop the price to the very rock bottom. Just enough for you to pay it off, and get out. Also, maybe you can arrange a short sale? If you owe more than it is worth, have your agent turn in a CMA to your lender showing that you are way over your head, and try to see if they would take less for the property. Sometimes this will work, because it will cost them a lot more to take your home in a lot of cases. Good luck to you!!

[quadracer111]

Well I am not going to lose it, I just need it gone! I cant remember if I have stated it, but I have already drop the price 210,000 in two years! That is whyI am on here stating all of this. I just dont get it!

[Sandpointian]

Hi Quad, We have a couple of homes in the CDA area. No question, yours is much larger with far more upgrades. Let me give you my own observations as a modest "investor."

1) the house size is too large for the lot in NID. Above about 2500 sf, the value per square foot declines, especially for city lots.

2) The target audience, upper middle class professionals who can afford $450K-$650K in CDA, are very, very few. Those that can afford these prices, would likely opt for more land, more privacy, and/or more access to Lake CDA or Hayden Lake. Equity locusts are in pre-retirement. The driveway, stairs and location and the loss of the equity transplants make it a tough sell.

3) The refinements and upgrades are all great, but their recapture value declines considerably.

4) The build-on-slope-get-view-of-lake-and-area is a bit ahead of its time for the area. CDA's pop is only 40K!! Those houses will have a wider audience when there are more people and more wealth (to get away from the "little people"). But NID's character is less that way. Of homes on the slopes of SE CDA, NE CDA, and SE Hayden, all which are nice, the target audience is much thinner.

5) Inside? Without pics and more details, I cannot say, however, I would home that your house used the slope in its design. I wonder only because of yoru comments of others' comments on the stairs. I do wonder about the location of the fireplace. On a cold, sunny day this would mean sun coming right into your eyes all afternoon? Or am I wrong?

6) I just saw the pics on MLS--hard to get a feel for the home. I would pay a photographer to take a set of nice photos and then get them on a slide show with its own URL that can be linked to your realtor's website. Your realtor is undermarketing the house. Yet the guy is claiming VIEW, yet there is not one single photo of the view!! COME ON!!! I have to say, marketing NID real estate is about three years behind the times. Go to the NY Times real estate web site. Observe how sellers of $15million homes market their homes: always with high quality photos that give you a feel for being there. In comparison, these photos (not very good ones to boot) are mechanical. Note: the wrap around porch seems to be a nice feature--not talked up at all.

Bottom line: through your own laudable efforts to deliver a fine product, you took your house from $350K to $425K. But in doing so, your pool of potential buyers was not only cut in half or more, but you now face some competition from the $500K-$550K homes which are locations that more people find attractive.

Tricky...from what I can gather online, you have built a nice house. Looks like a neighbor is selling his house at the same price (thanks, buddy), although yours looks a lot nicer. I don't think your house priced too badly. With 10% down, folks would be able to a conforming loan, which is nice. At $650K, you were too high. Now, hmmmm...getting there. If I were to have looked at your house cold turkey, I would have guessed $385K to $450K. So IMHO, you are in the ball park.

Now comes the realities of the Fall 2007 RE market: credit crunch (reduced your pool in half); gone are the equity locusts (cuts pool in half again); oversupply of decent homes in the $250K-$325K range (removes a few more); fear in the air (removes a few more buyers). What does this mean? The lack of buyers you will face is less the case of your pricing and more the case of the absence of an honest market, esp in your price range. In other words, if you drop another $70K, you still may not find a buyer. Still, there is no telling where the buyers will start to emerge. Perhaps with a pricing of $385K-$400K??

How bad are you hurting? What were your true costs on this puppy? Why not live it in and rent your other home? Or...rent this guy? Lease to own? Offer to carry the note?

In this market, you do not want to chase the buyer to much. Instead, try to create the market or seek alternatives. But...if you are desperate (which I am not saying you are), you may not have another choice. I tell you, I would bet that if you were to go down to $350K the interest in your house would come from neighbors. Somewhere below $300K, you will start getting interest from the bottom feeders, like myself, who are otherwise not in the market. Note, that I take the the POV that an investor should pay only 70-75 cents on the dollar to have the purchase make good business sense.

You are a victim of bad timing . This means the buyers out there want to be the beneficiaries of your bad timing. 2008 is forecast to be the worst of the credit crunch. If you can, hold on, otherwise even us bottom feeders will drop our prices.

I sincerely wish you the best.
Sandpointian
P.S. This is simply one amateur's opinion. I am sure there are others with more professional perspectives.

[Skytripper]

Originally Posted by Sandpointian

Hi Quad, We have a couple of homes in the CDA area. No question, yours is much larger with far more upgrades. Let me give you my own observations as a modest "investor."

1) the house size is too large for the lot in NID. Above about 2500 sf, the value per square foot declines, especially for city lots.

2) The target audience, upper middle class professionals who can afford $450K-$650K in CDA, are very, very few. Those that can afford these prices, would likely opt for more land, more privacy, and/or more access to Lake CDA or Hayden Lake. Equity locusts are in pre-retirement. The driveway, stairs and location and the loss of the equity transplants make it a tough sell.

3) The refinements and upgrades are all great, but their recapture value declines considerably.

4) The build-on-slope-get-view-of-lake-and-area is a bit ahead of its time for the area. CDA's pop is only 40K!! Those houses will have a wider audience when there are more people and more wealth (to get away from the "little people"). But NID's character is less that way. Of homes on the slopes of SE CDA, NE CDA, and SE Hayden, all which are nice, the target audience is much thinner.

5) Inside? Without pics and more details, I cannot say, however, I would home that your house used the slope in its design. I wonder only because of yoru comments of others' comments on the stairs. I do wonder about the location of the fireplace. On a cold, sunny day this would mean sun coming right into your eyes all afternoon? Or am I wrong?

6) I just saw the pics on MLS--hard to get a feel for the home. I would pay a photographer to take a set of nice photos and then get them on a slide show with its own URL that can be linked to your realtor's website. Your realtor is undermarketing the house. Yet the guy is claiming VIEW, yet there is not one single photo of the view!! COME ON!!! I have to say, marketing NID real estate is about three years behind the times. Go to the NY Times real estate web site. Observe how sellers of $15million homes market their homes: always with high quality photos that give you a feel for being there. In comparison, these photos (not very good ones to boot) are mechanical. Note: the wrap around porch seems to be a nice feature--not talked up at all.

Bottom line: through your own laudable efforts to deliver a fine product, you took your house from $350K to $425K. But in doing so, your pool of potential buyers was not only cut in half or more, but you now face some competition from the $500K-$550K homes which are locations that more people find attractive.

Tricky...from what I can gather online, you have built a nice house. Looks like a neighbor is selling his house at the same price (thanks, buddy), although yours looks a lot nicer. I don't think your house priced too badly. With 10% down, folks would be able to a conforming loan, which is nice. At $650K, you were too high. Now, hmmmm...getting there. If I were to have looked at your house cold turkey, I would have guessed $385K to $450K. So IMHO, you are in the ball park.

Now comes the realities of the Fall 2007 RE market: credit crunch (reduced your pool in half); gone are the equity locusts (cuts pool in half again); oversupply of decent homes in the $250K-$325K range (removes a few more); fear in the air (removes a few more buyers). What does this mean? The lack of buyers you will face is less the case of your pricing and more the case of the absence of an honest market, esp in your price range. In other words, if you drop another $70K, you still may not find a buyer. Still, there is no telling where the buyers will start to emerge. Perhaps with a pricing of $385K-$400K??

How bad are you hurting? What were your true costs on this puppy? Why not live it in and rent your other home? Or...rent this guy? Lease to own? Offer to carry the note?

In this market, you do not want to chase the buyer to much. Instead, try to create the market or seek alternatives. But...if you are desperate (which I am not saying you are), you may not have another choice. I tell you, I would bet that if you were to go down to $350K the interest in your house would come from neighbors. Somewhere below $300K, you will start getting interest from the bottom feeders, like myself, who are otherwise not in the market. Note, that I take the the POV that an investor should pay only 70-75 cents on the dollar to have the purchase make good business sense.

You are a victim of bad timing . This means the buyers out there want to be the beneficiaries of your bad timing. 2008 is forecast to be the worst of the credit crunch. If you can, hold on, otherwise even us bottom feeders will drop our prices.

I sincerely wish you the best.
Sandpointian
P.S. This is simply one amateur's opinion. I am sure there are others with more professional perspectives.

Excellent observations and info. IMO....as well here.
I agree completely with this post and the "bad timing."
There was a time when I believe a lot of home prices were heavily influenced by their size (sq. footage) more than a lot of other things. And at the time I truly thought that $100/sq. ft. was a fair and decent indicator of what a house should list for......but, of course there ARE MANY other things to take into account.
Even so....at the "bare minimum" of $100/sq. ft this house would be at about $360,000 but when you throw in all the other upgrades, design, location, etc.etc into the picture.......it SHOULD list comfortably above $400K and sell......BUT, unfortunately.......the housing market IS in deep trouble right now and a LOT of people are VERY worried for the economy for 2008 and beyond.
Honestly.........home prices ARE going to correct themselves now and for quite some time, IMO.......so try NEW and unique advertising tactics and......yes, do so on a national level. You WILL find a buyer......its just not as easy as it should be anymore.
I wouldn't lower my asking price much more than you have already, I mean....jeez....that's already a HUGE reduction and if someone doesn't grab it at a listing of say......$350,000........then the market is in far worse shape than I ever would have thought!
Or......IF it would help you or not, I would think you COULD rent it out for $2000-2500/mo? Dunno.
Nice lookin house, BTW.
Wish I could afford it.

[Sandpointian]

Skytripper (pilot? if so I am jealous!),
Thx on nice feedback.

TO OP, On rents, once you get above $1500-$1700, people are going to want either water, a view of water or mountains, land or ultra convenience. But at $1500, you can do alot to cauterize the wound and stop the bleeding. Two years @ 1500/month is $36K!! Nearly the 10% down one needs today.

I think a lot of homes are off the market precisely because many sellers are not terribly pressed to make the sale and they are unwilling to sell in a terrible market (that combined with usual winter slow down)

If you can afford it, rent it out. My advice is to pick as many brains as possible to find the market rent (leave ego at home) and then price the rent at 10% below to ensure tenants. If you "really need" to sell it, advertise at $350k.

Note that at some point, your house becomes a firesale. I am sure there are better options then to sell in a market freefall. See a tax guy.

[quadracer111]

WOW! Sandpointian! I am IMPRESSED!!! A lot of what you said made perfect sence! Now with all that being said, I would either have pushed my RE agent farther, but we just got an offer for the house. I took it and i am going to run! But its not over yet until we close in my own personal opinion! But you were very right about my RE agent, he didnt show as much as he could have. I think i was on the verge of firing him anyways in about a month. . . By the way it is going for 400K...