We Put Our House On The Market Today

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today has been circled on the calendar for weeks now. We had to have this place 100% cleaned and prepped, new paint in a couple of rooms, and all-around general beautification, because come hell or high water, we were putting this place on the market today.

Finally, today arrived – ad in the paper, signs posted up, craigslist posting, and a listing on sjbyowner.com, all leading up to today’s Open House. And in the end, we had a grand total of one family come and see the place.

Of course, when my wife asked me this morning if I thought we’d get many people today, my response was “I don’t care if only one person shows up, as long as it’s the right person”.

It was the right person.

This is the second time we’ve sold a home, and the second time the first person who walked through the door bought the place. Woohoo!!

2

Wow, that’s great! You keep hearing all the horror stories of houses being on the market for months and months… who knew a house with a pink-walled living room would go so fast?! :stuck_out_tongue: Good job!

3

I just wonder why you keep on moving so much. It’s the sheep, right? :smiley:

[sub]seriously, congrats. Hope you made money on the deal.[/sub]

4

Yay! Go Bristons! That’s awesome news.

5

Tell the truth…did you bury a St. Joseph statue by the front door? Congrats on such incredible luck…I have friends (and my evil neighbor) who have had their houses on the market for months and months and months…

6

Damn, Hal, nicely done! And a cute house!

7

Argh. We’ve had our house for sale for about a month now. We’ve had two separate possible buyers visit three times each, but both have fallen through at the end-goddamn parents (sorry). Oh well, it can take a while to sell a house here, and the sellers of the one we want are in no hurry to make the sale, so we’re good there. Once the 8+ inches of snow that fell on Friday is gone, we’re thinking of doing some scraping and painting. Anyone want to move to beautiful Morris, MN, the one area of the state that’s not awash in lakes?

8

Where are you moving to? Still in Jersey or elsewhere?

Lambo–nice house, but no desire to move (or to move to MN–I like IL.)

9

Congrats on selling the house! That is one tough nut to crack in this market - so all I can guess is that you priced it well.

That said, we went to the local Parade of Homes this weekend - you buy a ticket and then go tour homes - this year they ranged from “only” $2.9 million to a whopping $18 million.

One thing we noticed is that pricing is sometimes totally off the mark…one home for “only” $3 million was probably at least $2.5 million overpriced - even though it was a house, it looked more like a fancy condo and not even that fancy. Another two homes were next door to each other - with a $2 million dollar price difference - the cheaper home was far better and much more worth the actual price than the other home. BTW, we didn’t get to see the $18 million house this weekend - will go next Friday…but will be surprised to see if it looks like it is worth it.

But getting back to your sale - I think even in a tough housing market, there are most certainly buyers out there - but people still seem to think their house is what it was worth two or three years ago (during the housing boom) and just won’t let that unrealistic, inflated price from back then go.

Nice to see you were wise and priced it correctly. BTW, lambo, your house looks very nice and the price, at least to me, seems very realistic…best wishes to you too!

10

Congratulations on the sale, especially in this market.

11

Wow!

Not only is your house adorably cute and stuff, the fact you are so farking lucky to sell it to the first person that comes through just blows my mind.

How many St. Joseph statues do you have buried in the yard anyways?

12

You’re going to have to move somewhere reeeeeal nice to top that.

13

I suppose it was only a matter of time, Hal, before a Lambo became jealous.

14

Oh, my…

15

Thanks all! To those who’re wondering, no, no St. Joseph statue. We just looked at what we thought we could reasonably expect for the place and then added $15,000 to our asking price. The buyers came in and offered us $15,000 under our asking price. They think they got a steal, and we got exactly what we were hoping for (which is still a hell of a lot more than what we paid for it two years ago)…win-win!

As for where we’re going, it’ll be somewhere in southern Ocean County. We’re looking to get a place near my wife’s sister – she had a baby last year, but hates the day care situation there. The plan is for my wife to be able to stay home with The Littlest Briston, plus watch our nephew during the day (and perhaps an Even Littler Briston down the road?). Now we just have to find a new home!

The “why” is a little trickier. Basically, it comes down to this – we love our home, and wish we could take it with us. But the neighborhood sucks. In November of '06 I started this thread about a guy getting shot right behind my house. Since then, there’ve also been two drive-by shootings within a block of our home. Sorry, three shootings in 16 months is two over my limit (I figure one can be a fluke and can happen anywhere).

It’s a terrible shame – so much of our neighborhood is absolutely beautiful, but if you look close, the grime really shows. You’ll notice the drug deals going down in the corner grocery; you’ll hear drunken screaming matches turning into fistfights in the middle of the street…all kinds of crap like that. I hate that it’s a select few driving us away, but I refuse to bring my daughter up in an environment like this. Our next home won’t be anywhere near the size of this one, but I’ll go back to having loud noises making me think “car backfiring” rather than “gunshot”.

From the “How To Piss Off Your Neighbors” File: The house across the street from us has been on the market for several months now. Yesterday evening I was outside, and the owner came and pointed out how it’s a shame that we put up For Sale signs on our place, since having two homes across from each other on the market hurts both their chances. I told him not to worry, that the signs would be coming down shortly.

“Oh, changed your mind so soon?”, he asked. The look on his face when I told him that no, we sold it already, was fricking priceless.

16

Would I be cynical to suggest that it’s possible that you’ve undersold your homes? I mean, it’s not a bad thing if they remain on the market for a bit if you net more.

17

In this market? For “a hell of a lot more than we paid for it 2 years ago”?

I think Hal was lucky/brilliant to take the money and run.

18

The first place we sold was a condo. We sold it for what was, at the time, the highest price a condo ever sold for in that development. We had lived there for less than four years and sold it for just $2,000 short of double what we’d paid for it.

For this place, it’s a little harder to quantify. There are places for sale much cheaper than ours, but they’re absolute holes; and there are places asking a much higher price, but they’re palaces. There really isn’t too much in our area we can compare ourselves with.

There are a total of two other properties nearby within $5,000 of our asking price. One is quite a bit smaller, but it’s a single-family home (ours is a duplex). The other is the more comparable property – it’s very similar to ours, with some tradeoffs. A little bit smaller, but an extra 1/2 bath, but many appliances aren’t included, but it has gas heat, etc etc. The buyer was going to buy that one, but when he saw the “going to be for sale soon” craigslist posting my wife put up, he decided to wait and see our place. Glad he did, because although he liked the other place, apparently he loved ours.

If this were any other market, I’d counter-offer. However, I don’t want to find myself in the situation I’m seeing so many others in – get an offer, reject it, and find myself six months down the road with my house still on the market and price-reduced to below that original offer. This is definitely a buyer’s market right now, so although I think there’s a good chance I could get another $3-5,000 out of these buyers, it’s just not worth it to me to chance them walking away.

19

I just had my offer for a duplex accepted. It had been on the market for several months, and during that time the price had been dropped $30,000. While I was considering it, the owner decided to offer a $5000 buyer’s bonus, which clinched it for me, as I felt the property was already underpriced. I’m wondering if the inspection is going to show something I missed.