Anyone else trying to sell their house right now?

[MSRminis]

First off I dont WANT to move but husband lost his job year and a half ago and we tried to make it work here but cant (very specialized job) so he is in Virginia and I am in Ohio trying to sell the house. House has been up since May and 4 showings. Now we are on a farm, in the country, 8 acres-still considered a nice size property. So far three of the lookers werent looking for a farm-dont know why they even came out-the other she had one horse she boarded and he had no interest in horses and he took one look at the size of the property and the work to keep it up and said NO WAY. The people make STUPID comments and they are all clearly city folk who want a city home in the country. They dont even LOOK at the property-just look at the house and comment its too high a price...its very frustrating. I told my agent it needs to be marketed as a farm-it is one and for some reason people are coming out expecting something different. Its so hard to get it all ready for these showings with three kids, an 8 acre farm, and no husband to have them leave critical and mostly ridiculous comments...sorry...needed to vent!!

 

[kaykay]

I understand your frustration. Most homes in Ohio are taking 6 months to sell. I recently sold a small farm and yes I marketed it as a hobby farm which I think is the way to go. I will say we had numerous full price offers the only trouble we had was getting buyers financed as banks are very tight right now.

Your real estate agent should be pre qualifying them before he/she lets them see the property. There is no sense in wasting everyones time if the person isnt really interested. I pre qualified every person I showed the property to before I let them see it.

I also marketed it very aggressively online which some agents tend to overlook.

Right now price is everything. Make sure its priced for this market. No one likes the market we are in right now but we all have to deal with it. Houses that are priced right from the beginning sell much quicker then ones that have to wait and do price reductions.

Good luck selling your home!

Kay

 

[Cathy_H]

Ours has been listed since February. We have had several interested people but the drawback to our house is it does not have a basement. Everyone loves the view with all of the trees and the peaceful setting. Our land is 6.2 acres with barn, several dry lots & pastures and a nice older house. We already have our new land paid for about 15 minutes from where we live now & have recently built a new barn on it but will not build a new house until this one is sold............. The realtor says she does not understand why ours has not sold as it is well maintained, landscaped nicely & immaculate. Our contract is up this month and I am going to put a For Sale By Owner up & state realtors welcome and I will probably email realtors to let them know this. We lowered the price twice..................Three houses on our street have sold within the last month.......Regarding stupid comments - one person told the realtor that they didn't want our place because it is too windy here ??? There were lots of apples laying on the ground underneath our apple tree. I made the comment that the wind had blown some apples off the tree the last few days as it was a bit windy. I told the realtor that she didn't want to live anywhere in Ky then but they did buy in another county........I did hear that some sellers are buying cheap small cars that get good gas mileage and advertising "buy my house & you get this car".

 

[kaykay]

I will agree that you will get all kinds of crazy comments on your house. Just goes with the territory. Just let it slide off your back and dont take it personal. Home selling and buying is stressful because for most it is the single biggest investment they will make in their life and our homes are our castles so its always hard to hear a critique of our home. Kinda like our horses

Cathy your place is just beautiful and I am a little suprised it hasnt sold. But again you have to be sure the agent is going after the right market. Marketing is everything in real estate.

 

[h2t99]

I can feel your pain! Our house was for sale for a year!! We had offers for price but they had to sell their house first and then lost their jobs!! Twice that happened!! Finally we sold it a month after we moved to Tennessee!! Our house was in Michigan. We listed ours as for sale by owner so we could have a lower price and not worry about the commision! Good Luck and it will happen!!

 

[dixie_belle]

We actually own two homes and have one on the market. It is an untra-contempory home, white stucco and red metal roof on the outside, lots of glass blocks, granite floors, all the bells and whistles. It has been for sale for quite some time. All the pictures of it show what it is: contempory. You cannot think it is anything else. Know what comments we get? It is a tad too modern looking for us. DUH. What did they expect? One look at the outside and you would know exactly what to expect on the inside.

Our lives are on hold until that one sells. We are looking to retire. Once that one sells, we will start looking in a cooler climate for something with less house than we have now, and more land. Maybe Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri? We are not overly particular. As I have no children at home, we can move anywhere. But, we can't do a single thing until the one sells. Sigh.

We have priced it cheaper per square foot than any other house in the neighborhood. But it is huge, sits on one acre that slopes down to the Brazos River. It is in a gated community so the average price is quite steep.

I guess we may have to lower the price AGAIN, but it is very frustrating to not be able to get on with our lives.

Housing market is awful in Texas at the moment.

 

[Magic]

I have a friend who has had her home on the market for nearly a year; it has two or three acres, and everything is just pristine. She has lowered the price twice but still no bites. I don't understand why, although perhaps it is that horse-owners buying homes are in far fewer numbers than the rest of the buyers, so fewer to be interested? I know it's terribly frustrating for her.

 

[Hosscrazy]

I just finished selling my house. I kept hearing horror stories about how tough it would be and thought it was worth a shot. I had a really good realtor, we had it listed on realtor.com and advertised in the local newspapers. We had it priced right - I was very realistic about the market prices today and guess what? It sold in just 5 weeks!!! Quick easy escrow, and I could not be happier!! I do believe it's because I was realistic about the value of the house in today's market. Good luck with your home!

Liz R.

 

[Charley]

We have two houses and have been watching the market. So far we are just riding it out. One is almost paid for and not much trouble. Our daughter lives there with our four horses and it is working for us. In a few years we will sell one of our houses, but may choose to move back to the other or stay here....who knows.

Our realtor has two homes that she had up for sale at the same time this spring and summer....one in Florida and one in Georgia. Neither has sold and she has just pulled them off the market. She says nothing is selling.

 

[Basketmiss]

We have had my MIL house for sale since June 22nd. We had to move her to Kentucky (with her daughter) after her stroke. Anyway we just got a contract this week on it so we are keeping ours fingers crossed. The people were already pre-approved with their financing.. Good Luck to everyone selling your homes...

 

[FoRebel]

We've had our house for sale for almost 18 months now! We had it on the market with a realtor for 9 months and have had it for sale by owner the last 9 months. When we had it listed with the realtor we had 3 showings, same with the for sale by owner path. Hopefully we'll be able to sell it soon because we can't live in 700 sq ft with 2 kids (5 yr old and 9 month old) and 3 cats anymore. Our 9 month old is getting too mobile and thinking about walking, when that happens the house is going to seem sooooo much smaller because of having to close off rooms!

 

[AppyLover2]

My house and 20 acres has been on the market since mid June. Only 3 lookers here too. Very frustrating since I found the place in Florida I wanted. Guess it just wasn't ment to be, but that doesn't keep me from wishing it had sold. I'm thinking when the contract ends in October I'll go with a by owner thing. Five years ago, in Florida, I sold a house by owner in 3 days. A year later I sold a 5 acre property there the first day it was on the market. It definitely spoiled me.

 

[Sonya]

I know here in Michigan the economy is absolutely terrible....houses are not selling and they are priced way below market value and what they are worth. Houses that are well worth $250,000 are not even selling in the high $100,00's. It is definately a buyers market here right now....problem is...there are no buyers!

 

[CKC]

Our neighbors house has been for sale for almost 2 years. They have dropped the price almost $150K.

I can remember when we first moved in our home(9 years ago) we got a letter from a realtor asking if we would sell our house(the priced they listed for an estimate buying price was crazy! It was over 3 times what we paid for it). It mentioned having buyers moving from the city looking for land for their horses. Considering that's what we needed it for we didn't even contact them. Within a year of that offer you couldn't find a place that had not doubled or tripled in price. A lot of people moved from the DC area to our area. The prices are now dropping and there are so many empty homes now. We see a lot of for rent signs as well.

If we sold our house now we would have to market it as a hobby farm. People are paying around $750-1000 a month boarding in horse communities about 40 minutes from me. They could save a lot if they wanted to buy a place out here.

When we were looking for a place years ago the only thing I cared about at the time was where the barn would go and the amount of land. I didn't really care about the size of the house,etc.

 

[Cathy_H]

Cathy your place is just beautiful and I am a little suprised it hasnt sold. But again you have to be sure the agent is going after the right market. Marketing is everything in real estate.

..............Thank you Kay. One of the main problems is we have no basement but we recently spent $5,000 + to encapsulate the crawl space which at least can be used for storage now. I will do a For Sale by Owner & agressively go after the advertising to see what happens. I hear the Lousiville area is not as bad as the national and I have seen a lot of SOLD signs lately.

 

[kaykay]

Just a hint. Most homes sold right now are going FHA (as that is the only money available right now) FHA inspections are much tougher then normal bank inspections and even harder now after the lending fiasco of years past. Before you even get an offer make sure your home will pass an FHA inspection and it will make closing much faster. Sales in certain parts of Ohio are picking up with the release of addtional FHA money and additional tax breaks etc. Also there are many first time home buyer options that are outstanding.

I keep saying its not a great time to sell but its the best time to buy. So even though you may not get what you want on the one you are selling you will probably get a lot more house for a better price on the one you are buying. So in the end it comes out about even unless you are not going to buy another home.

 

[MelissaAH]

I feel your pain.

We are self employed and things got slow so we put our house on the market last December. We had one person look at it in 4 months. We knew we had it over priced. But I really did not keep up with the housing market value declining. So we had to take it off the market at leat 30 days before we tried to refi. We got stuck in one of those 3 year fixed then goes adjustable loans. It goes adjustable in September. We tried to refi with our lender (WELLS FARGO) who wanted to charge us $25,000 in fees, at almost 8% interest (we had a credit score of 844) to give us another one of the same type of loans. That would add another $500.00 a month to our mortgage that we are struggling with. When we sat down to sign the loan docs 3 years ago we read the docs and my husband was furious. We had spent hours with them and we almost walked (we should have) but those smooth talking (almost like used car salemen) loan officers said,"oh don't worry, you can refi in 3 years, no problem" Well, guess what...it's a problem. Our house is now worth less than what we owe so a week after we recieve the Good Faith Est we get a letter saying we were declined anyway! ARGH! In April we let our only employee go because we could not afford to keep one on so now it's just my husband and I run the business from home which is literally a 9-5 job that keeps me busy all day.

So we put the house back on the market as a short sale. And we'll see what happens. If it doesn't sell then it goes into foreclosure. Yes, it's horrible but I we had tried to keep it and make the monthy payments I would have went down some serious financial roads that are not good to go down and the stress alone would have killed me. I was not sleeping, crying, and in a bad depression. We talked to our CPA and she thought this was the way to go. In her words, "All what your going through is over brick and mortor and your family is worth more than a credit score. You can rebuild your credit" Hence my thread about our new rental home!

So my thoughts are with all of you trying to sell. Hope you do.

 

[kaykay]

Melissa with the passing of the housing relief bill, you should be able to refinance. Just because you were turned down by one bank (and i have heard wells fargo is not lending anything right now) doesnt mean another one will. Have you talked to your mortgage company?? They should be working with you. Before you let it foreclose or short sell (remember a short sell is almost as bad on your credit as a foreclosure) see if you can do one of the government programs to refinance.

 

[lyn_j]

My youngest daughter just put her house up for sale. They also found one they want to buy. We will see how it goes.

We are refinancing our house right now to do some add on work. We were able to qualify for an FHA loan as well as a conventional. The conventional has less orrigination fees etc. I think we will go that route.We have lived here 10 years, we have 4.5 acres, 2000 sq ft house with a small barn and two outbuildings. WE bought it for 156 and it appraised now for 282.00 they have build lots of new homs around us. Our value jumped 100 K in 2006 and then 30 more in 2008. Im looking forward to the new sun room! Good luck and keep us posted.

Lyn

 

[Keri]

We have sold two houses in 3 years. Its not a pleasant experience. Our last house we sold for what we had into it (completely renovated and updated). Our realator bought it and will make bank in a few years when the market picks back up (hopefully). If we were in Ohio, I'd be all over your place! There is no horse property here at reasonable prices even in this type of market. A lot of money for a whole lot of crap!

We settled on just an acre and completely re-doing this house again (our third house due to hubby's job). I think in a few years after the hay feild behind us develops, we'll build.