My house in suburban Washington, D.C., has been on the market for two months now. It gets steady traffic (three or four visitors a week), and my realtor is receiving generally good feedback about the price and condition of the place. But not a single offer so far. The realtor predicted that it would take 30 to 60 days to sell, but that was based on last year’s market. I’m sure the house will sell eventually, but I’m getting nervous because I’ve long been planning to leave town and start a new phase of my life in January. Until it sells, I’m stuck here.
I guess I’m just looking for some reassurance that houses are indeed selling in the United States these days. Around here, the market seems to have come to a screeching halt this summer. It was moribund before the mortgage-finance crisis started driving interest rates up, and now it seems positively lifeless.
Is the situation the same in your area, or are some houses still selling? If you sold your own house recently, did you need to lower the price significantly, gut and make over the place, or add financial sweetners for the buyers?
Also, would any real estate or financial types care to hazard a guess about how soon mortgage rates will stabilize enough that people who are genuinely looking can feel more comfortable about making a commitment?
My boyfriend lives in a MD suburb of Washington DC, and he says that two of his neighbors who were trying to sell their townhomes gave up after almost 5 months and rented them out instead.
Houses I looked into buying over a year ago are still for sell, and it’s not due to prices, which are fair, or that the house is in bad condition, since most of them are in very good condition.
My area simply has far more sellers at the moment than buyers. You can currently get a 3 bedroom 2 bath on .5 acres of land here for $120k.
On the other hand, I sold a house in Reston in less than a week earlier this spring, and a couple houses near me sold at about the same time (although they had been on the market for about twelve months each…). So there is activity happening.
My zip code has about 400 listings. My giant anonymous hive of a neighborhood has 214 (lots of vacant homes, many foreclosures). My little street has 5 on the market. I’ve been here almost a year and I’ve only noticed two SOLD signs. Prices are still wildly inflated from the run up of the last 5 years – at least 100K over what they should be, IMO.
Foreclosures are adding to the market glut, and as you might expect, banks are tightening their lending standards in the wake of the subprime mess, meaning there are fewer prospective homebuyers who can get financing.
So we have increase in supply at the same time we have a decrease in demand. Not a good time to be a seller.
My house has been on the market in Pittsburgh for five months. We average one look-see per week, but no bites. Not even the people who were friends of the neighbors who were supposedly going to low-ball us big time. sigh
I just got off the phone with a company who may buy it from us, but we’ll take a significant hit to do so. Can only swing the two mortgages for so long.
My parent’s realtor told them that people in this area are hearing all the reports about it being a buyer’s market and getting excited and making insultingly low offers. There was no real housing bubble around here, so nothing has really burst. Yes, sellers are eager, but you still can’t get something for nothing. (unless you want my house - I’ll even throw in my firstborn!)
Central Florida, and not so much. What’s funny is that there are houses standing empty in my neighborhood for months, and 3 new housing developments being built just down the road. Wonder how well they’ll sell.
My mother ran into a friend of hers who is a Realtor this weekend, and the report is that the housing slump has not affected the market here at all. I’m not surprised; it seldom does. That’s one advantage to living in a backwater miles-from-nowhere place. Slumps and highs don’t get this far north.
Well, first of all, I wonder why the Google ads are inviting me to undo circumcision damage.
But, no, they’re not selling in my area either. My town is, hands down, the most desirable one in the area due primarily to the schools and easy commute to Providence and my street has several small houses for sale which should appeal to people wanting to move to our town but who can’t afford a larger home. But…no. The only one that’s sold is one previously owned by a young married doctor who was arrested for exposing himself to 9 year old boys at the Y. I would imagine that one was priced to sell.
There are five houses on my street that are for sale right now- and one of them has been on the market for four months now.
What really sucks (for me) is that I’m moving out of town in two weeks- I’m transferring to a different office. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to sell my house, and absolutely impossible that I’ll be able to sell it without taking a HUGE loss. As a result I’m going to try renting the place out… but in the two weeks it’s been advertised, I haven’t gotten a single nibble. I’ll be lowering the rental price by two hundred bucks next week.
I’m seriously thinking about letting the bank foreclose on it, if I can’t rent it out. I’m going to be losing at least six hundred a month even if I can find someone to rent it… and if I manage to get rid of the house, that’d be about $2400/month I’d be saving. I hate to do that- I love the house, but the market’s just become impossible.
Just to sound a contrarian note, here in Boston, my sister has been trying to buy a house for some months now, with no real luck. Anything that’s attractively priced is quickly snapped up. She and her husband have put in offers near asking price and been rejected. For all the talk of catastrophe in the housing market here, prices are still sky high to my mind, and stuff is selling.
I got an offer on my house in NC the first day it hit the market, though I suspect we priced it too low. The house I just bought in TN had only been listed 2 days before we made our offer. Just trying to offer a little hope here. YMMV (obviously).
Austin, TX: Yes they are, and quite well, thank you. Although two houses on my street have been on the market for about 2.5 months now – priced at $70/sq ft while similar sized houses priced at $80 and $90/sq ft are selling around them after only a few weeks on the market. I’m guessing the lower price for larger size is not attracting the right buyers. Or they’re in bad shape.
Houses in my little town usually sell quickly – taxes are low, and we’re an equal distance between two bigger towns where most people work.
But there are 3 houses on the market now, two of them for almost a year. That’s unheard of. They’re nice places too, two newer ranches and a well-kept four-square.
Three houses is a piddly number, I know, but there are probably only 60 houses in the whole town.
Not in the parts of Minnesota I’m familiar with. My neighborhood has 4 houses on the market, one of those for almost a year now, even with a 25% price reduction. The 2 new housing developments around me have come to a screetching halt. They aren’t building any new houses and no one is biting on the models they originally build. The housing developers around here have resorted to commercials talking about how icky it is to buy a USED house, wouldn’t you really rather have a nice new one?
The house just up the street (same side, one house between it and my house) just sold. I’m not exactly sure when it was put on sale, but somewhere between 3 and 6 months would bne my guess.
