Trying to Sell a House Without a Basement - Are We Completely Screwed?

In My Humble Opinion
21

If you had to rent the house out for a while would the local rent cover the existing mortgage? could you still qualify for the “new” mortgage if you did that?

Is the laudnry room on the top floor? If so, make sure that’s in the ad. Also, do you have a soaking tub? If not, is there room to add one in the Master bedroom?

Can you add a large shed in the back to make up for the storage space lost by not having a basement?

Just trying to come up with options for you to consider, in case you haven’t already. . .

22

Their skills do not lie in market analysis. Their whole goal is to facilitate buying and selling. The action is what they seek; a 10 or 20k difference in price does not really affect their bottom line.

Right, that’s why I included market analysis and appraisal, choosing the lowest of the 3. Information that you pay for = vastly superior to information you do not.

Luckily for the OP, there’s a sucker born every minute. I saw in the paper not long ago that some idiot paid 15k more for their house (that was on the market when I was hunting that I passed up) than I did with 15% less space on a noisier street and zero upgrades (I’ve got a whole new kitchen, bath, appliances, doors, flooring (hardwood and carpeting).)

23

You could always bury a statue of St. Joseph! My boss swears this helped her sell her home. And I agree with the others…the lack of a basement is not the problem.

24

You’re no more screwed than anyone else out there trying to sell at the moment. It’s just hard as hell to sell right now.

I just bought a house in November; we started looking in August. It’s a HUGE buyer’s market where I live and we knew that going into it, so we shopped around. The house we ended up buying was the 3rd we made an offer on … the first 2 had crazy owners who thought they were going to get full price for their house.

So … unsolicited advice time … the first offer is probably the best offer you will get. If you get an offer, take it and work with it. When we tried to buy house #2, it has JUST gone on the market, we were the first to see it, we loved it and made an offer the next day. Negotiations eventually broke down because they appeared to think “eh, we’re getting offers this quickly, there’ll be someone else who wants it more.”

Ask me if that house is still on the market. Why yes, yes it is.

If house hunters are anything like me up there, there may very well be people keeping an eye on your home. I would look at listings a little out of my price range and check now and then to see if the price went down – if I saw the price going down, that told me that the owners were getting antsy. One thing I never did was assume that a house that had been on the market for a long time was undesirable – buyers are picky as hell when houses are plentiful.

I understand if you don’t want to but I’d love to see your listing. I was SHOCKED at how shitty some of the listings were down here! Halfassed, out of focus pictures, lame descriptions, etc.

Also … are you offering any concessions in your listing? Carpet allowance, paint allowance, closing costs, etc.? Closing costs were a dealbreaker for us so we compromised with the owners … we ended up offering 5k than their rock-bottom price and in return they handled the closing costs – worked out great.

As far as the basement thing goes – meh. We specifically wanted a 1 story house (which was surprisingly hard to find, almost everything down here is 2 story). We’d have considered a house with a basement but it definitely wasn’t on our “must have” list. So many things can go wrong with a basement I’m kinda glad we don’t have one.

25

PandaBear has it right. It’s a buyer’s market. I stalked my house for six months, watching the price drop $50K, before we really even started looking at it seriously. We made the offer when the previous owners were following their moving truck to North Carolina. Too many people overprice their houses in this market. With the house we sold, we priced it at what the realtor suggested and still ended up selling it for almost 10% less than what it was on the market for, in a desirable neighborhood and with traits that most houses in the neighborhood didn’t have, like a second bathroom and a two-car garage. The market is good, and you’ve already made an error that puts you at a disadvantage. But there may be people out there stalking your house. The suggestion of a storage shed isn’t a bad one–what you need to do is know your house’s flaws and do your best to fix them.

26

Since the OP has indicated she doesn’t plan to return to the thread, I’m closing it now. There’s been a lot of good advice regarding house selling and buying, so thanks to everyone who offered it.