Need to sell my home in the WORST way!

[marleeps]

Call Tom Torgerson at Century 21 - if anyone can sell your house, he can - he is the best and worth the call -

[Sandpointian]

Quadracer,
I was really happy to see that you got $400K. For all the work, you deserved at least as much.

This market is weird and will stay weird as long as there is a cloud over our collective mindsets. With credit tightening, interest rates increasing, the economy slowing, and inventory remaining high, the signs are for a rather dead housing market even in a high growth area such as CDA.

The only silver lining is that for those priced out, they have time to build a nest egg and to buy without major worry that the market will runaway from them.

Nice job. Pour yoruself a cold one. While you can look at the glass half empty, you can and should consider yourself fortunate to emerge with a chance to fight again.

S

[motherof31977]

People need to understand that Idaho is not California. People here have a hard enough time trying to afford houses that are above $200,000. Look in the real estate magazines. Houses that are above $300,000 sit on the market for years. Anything above $400,000 is almost impossible. So unless you find someone that is from California you are going to have a hard time selling. Sorry reality sucks.

[Sandpointian]

To Mother,
there is a lot of truth in what you say. Above $300K, the pool of local candidate buyers shrinks considerably. Part of this is due to economic differences between California and Idaho, but part, and just as important, is our lack of scale. The population in the SF Bay Area, LA, Orange County and San Diego is HUGE. Wind of a great deal can draw buyers from the entire metro area, literally millions. Whereas, a good deal in CDA may have less than 25,000 potential buyers. Within each pool only a fraction can afford the house. While the pool of qualified buyers remains large in those areas in California, they really shrink in CDA. While the ocassional $400K house can sell quickly, it is impossible that a large number of $400K+ homes can sell...

A significant chunk of growth spurts in recent years has come from outside interest. When this wanes, as it did in 2007, the market gets stuck with high end homes for which there are only a handful of local buyers. Copper Ridge is a great example. As far as I can tell, beautiful homes, but with a market that does not really exist (suburbanites want to pay for $600K for homes on .8 acres--when for a bit more you can get a modest place on the Lake)

With higher paying jobs and a healthier economic base, the pool of potential local buyers will increase. It will also increase as the economies Spokane and Post Falls continue to attract better employers. Finally, the growth of the region itself will build critical mass to support a ton of higher end homes. But these trends can support a few more $400K+ homes each year, not the hundreds that were built. But the time being, $350K-$600K suburban homes, even if beautiful and extremely well built, will sit outside the range of affordability and outside the the expectations of buyers. They will be sold predominantly to outsiders who are cash rich or sitting of massive equity...Within that range, buyers will buy on four points: location, quality, fit and lifestyle,

To me, the more interesting range is $250K-$350K. Here is where the upper middle class live. This range should remain pretty healthy as the local economy chugs along. But...what I notice is that going by the listings, there is a great mix of quality homes in this range. Some look beautiful and solid, while others look boxy and cheap. Guess which ones sell and guess which ones can be bargained down by 20-25%?

Location, location, location plus quality, quality, quality plus target audience, target audience, target audience plus lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle. Houses that move today but do well on all four.

To get a sense of price trends in the area, one needs to look at the evolution of listings since 2001. By 2004/2005, it seemed clear that marketing shifted almost exclusively toward the outside buyer. Pieces of crap ( I mean that literally--tear downs) that would not have fetched $80K on the local market were successfully sold to outsiders coming from insane markets for $300K+. One place near Sander;s beach dols for $250K-$280K and was torn down and rebuilt and listed for $400K or so. Sorry, I am not sure if the guy can get $325K.

It would be fascinating to get sales data from 2004-2007. I would bet that many such homes would be underwater had they been financed under normal terms (as opposed to being paid for with huge amounts of equity). Not all mind you, but many. I recall dozens of such listings some of which I went to open houses on or looked at with the broker. From the vantage point of 2008, those prices were 30-40% over what people are asking for today. And perhaps 50% over what somehouses can fetch today. Wow!! Now those houses were bubbly!!

Those were incredible days, but ultimately devastating for local renters who saw their dreams of owneship put back by a decade or so by the "screw/milk the outsider" and "let's buy since houses here will appreciate 20% a year forever" mania that took place. Now that we are coming on three years since the Summer of 2005 (would make a great flick), we are left with the RE market that is now permanently focused on the CDA of the future, a CDA with increasing numbers of migrants and an economy to support higher end jobs. This CDA is increasingly out of reach of many local renters or kids that grew up local who are now forced to move. Harsh reality of economic change and the harsh reality of the aftermath of a RE bubble.

The housing prices of the 1990s and early 2000s will never return again...entry homes of $170K+ are here to stay. There are homes in the $130-$170K range, far more than I have seen since 2003, but they are almost all in the same area (you interpret as you see fit). New starter homes are at $180K-$200K, with the occasional one at $170K. There are more condos--the new starter home. Although from what I have seen, many are hideous and seem to be built by those with no experience whatsoever with high density housing. The Lofts at 609 Sherman are a great example. Yikes! Sandpoint suffers from this problem as well at the lower end.

As for Sandpoint, our market is so much smaller and quirky. Higher end homes are almost always designed for a market than goes beyond Sandpoint residents and have been that way for a long time. Sandpoint is a place that people move to for Sandpoint itself, as opposed to a place that offers the job first and location second. That said, the numbers of newbies tailed off in 2006 and 2007. But even so, price movements have been rather uneven, a bit down, but not by much, with a number of homes priced above 2005 listings. Only a few flippers as far as I can tell (using big and frequent markdowns as evidence). Low end homes are fewer but the houses in the $200K-$300K seem more plentiful than I recall. Also with a great mix of quality. $250K-$350K range has a lot of nice houses. Very rare to see decent homes under $160K or really under $200K. These are usually "jewel boxes," 2br1BA under 1000sf or fixer-uppers. But the market in Sandpoint is so much thinner than even CDA. I like it that way. But it is not a market for those working retail unless you are sitting on inherited money....and increasingly CDA is going in the same direction...

Sorry for the rambling...
S

[Luckyfella]

quad racer whata coinicidence ive built a home on a acre in post falls at about the same price and oh my goawd its been two years and its till sitting whats with this place people get down right steals and their so so so picky i think its really takes away from the area and really makes it stink these homes are a down right great deal and noone touches em ive seen most want a 75 grand truck and a 100 grand dinky vinyl sided home im different i have used rigs that are in great shape and a buetiful home not to cut idaho down but only in spud nik state will a home sit 5 years hahahahahawhen their buetifull homes brand new on a big olll lot i wish you and my self lucjk we need it dealing with selling our homes to survive

[wingnut96]

Well as a former resident of northern Idaho, it saddens me to see that locals can no longer afford to buy homes in their area. Seems like the investors have had their way with good ol' "Spud Nik". Since the only big money comes from out of state and local jobs will not support these inflated home prices, I am not shocked at all to see these places sit on the market. Not that I wish anyone harm, but I'm rather glad to see the housing market take a dive. Maybe it won't have the appeal to those trying to make a buck of the normal local people but I know that's not going to happen. I know we all go into a home hoping for ROI but sometimes it just gets too carried away. I try not to get too upset at those who move to an area and try to take over and make Idaho the new California but it's darn near hard to do. Those who have experience in home sales and flopping properties have far more knowledge the country bumpkins like myself. What I think is a shame, to others it's hey bumpkin too bad. Knowledge is power...now get out of the way. And we all wonder what is happening to America. GREED!!! I just hope that when my time is over here that I can find a nice chuck of land and build my own. Adios

[Luckyfella]

my earlier post is kinda anti this anti that but in reality i feel the sandpoiten feella is close on what he says when you get to the higher ups 400plus your potential buyers are cut way way down im faced with a higher price and a acre in the prairie which cuts my potentials way way down my advice is get to a point where yr your own bank and dont have that misearble monthly payment than does it really matter if it sits three years for 160 grand ????? thats friggin pretty good wages a year for doing hardly anything then you illiminatte the greeeedy banks and the greeeedy bottom feeders as you dont have the annoying miserable interest payments each and evry month. and yr building life as a small dawg will be alot more enjoyable. get to a point where you are a indepandant of the systems greeedy little weasely arms and youll be alot more happier and succesfull and wont have to worry about going bankrupt. What happens when greed kicks in and you go bang out to make more more more you end up ion a bind hence the market was controlled by greedy buyers and greedy sellers and it banged up in their faces id say stay small and be yr own bank (no loans ) and do one at a time good luck at 400 k you lost big time that home i know its wherabouts is worht alot more than 400 k just my old anti opinion hahaha