what to do.... (Birmingham: mortgage, real estate, foreclosed)

[beadnsue]

I moved away from Michigan and have a house up north. Tourist/retirement area. No mortgage.
It was worth about double what it is listed for. (but that doesn't matter now) Listed it last summer.
It's been looked at a lot, lots of interest, no offers. EXCEPT an offer two days ago that is disgustingly low.
Still..... it's tempting.

ANyone having any luck selling their home? We are thinking we should just keep it for a second home rather than giving it away for such a low price. Or selling it that cheap without using a realtor so we don't have realtor fees on top of a depressing amount of money paid.

I so want to buy a house in the state we moved in, but if we sell our house that low, it won't begin to buy what we had.

any comments? any help here? How is everyone doing in any sales of homes?

[raingirl]

If You Can Keep It Has A Second Home, You Have It As A Rental Or Somewhere To Go To Visit.

[mich2fla]

It's a good time to buy and a lousy time to sell. You have nothing to lose and counter on the offer.

[beadnsue]

thank you for your input. It's hard to turn an offer down that may be the only one, and yet I am sickened by the fact the offer is less than 50% of it's value 3 years ago.

[malamute]

Originally Posted by beadnsue

I moved away from Michigan and have a house up north. Tourist/retirement area. No mortgage.
It was worth about double what it is listed for. (but that doesn't matter now) Listed it last summer.
It's been looked at a lot, lots of interest, no offers. EXCEPT an offer two days ago that is disgustingly low.
Still..... it's tempting.

ANyone having any luck selling their home? We are thinking we should just keep it for a second home rather than giving it away for such a low price. Or selling it that cheap without using a realtor so we don't have realtor fees on top of a depressing amount of money paid.

I so want to buy a house in the state we moved in, but if we sell our house that low, it won't begin to buy what we had.

any comments? any help here? How is everyone doing in any sales of homes?

How close are you to retiring in case you decide you would want to retire in that area? Keeping it would save you from having to buy a retirement home later. And if you can use it for a vacation home then you might rather hang onto it as a kind of investment.

If you're not sure and aren't going to lose much by just keeping it, maybe you should just sit on it for a while.

[Cliffie]

If you don't have a payment on it, by all means keep it! The market will turn around. I talked to a guy this week who just bought a $220,000 place for $105,000, so clearly the turnaround has not happened yet.

[suydam]

Originally Posted by Cliffie

If you don't have a payment on it, by all means keep it! The market will turn around. I talked to a guy this week who just bought a $220,000 place for $105,000, so clearly the turnaround has not happened yet.

If he bought it for $105,000 then it's not a $220,000 place...it's a $105,000 place. If it was a $220,000 place, someone would have paid that for it and he would never have gotten it for $105,000.

Remember... there's no real estate value other than what someone will pay on a given day.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by suydam

If he bought it for $105,000 then it's not a $220,000 place...it's a $105,000 place. If it was a $220,000 place, someone would have paid that for it and he would never have gotten it for $105,000.

Remember... there's no real estate value other than what someone will pay on a given day.

Exactly - appraisors can put a figure on anything, but until it sells, you don't know its true value.

I once asked my in-laws whether they were disappointed that they did not sell their Birmingham house a couple years ago for $400k+ when they were thinking about it. They immediately say "no" because they bought it for ~$50k 30-40 years ago and even $300k, the going rate in 2008, sounds too good to be true. As they say, it gives them an excuse to live in Birmingham for several more years.

It's foolish, IMHO, to think about what our houses were supposedly worth several years ago when it fact we were all sitting on a bubble.

[Rapunzll]

Sue, where exactly is your home?

I am going to be putting my home on the market in the next week or so, and if I can't get a decent price, I may just hold on to the place for a few more years until things improve, which I am fairly certain they will.

[YAZ]

We saw a home here in Phoenix that gave us incentive to put our home up for sale in the hope of buying it. 1600 sq. ft., beautiful yard, pool, etc.

Foreclosed property that the bank listed at 170k.

In 2004, it sold for 230k.

It was just sold for 163K.



Great time to buy, crappy time to sell....