When I first got into real estate a great mentor told me "you don't make money selling a home, you make money buying it". How true that is! When a buyer is looking for a home one of the first thoughts on either their, or their agents minds should be...what about resale? Many of my clients tease me about talking about selling their home when they haven't even bought it. This is one of my duties as a Buyer Representative, however. Many times the client has stars in their eyes and is just looking at the home in the light of how nice it is comparable to their current living accomodations. Often times they beleive they will live in this home for the rest of their lives. I have to be the one looking out for their interests because I know that, while they might live there the rest of their lives, it's extremely rare.
When looking for a home you have to look at location (upwards and downwards trends too), price, amenities, condition, floorplan and cub appeal. It's great to identify a house that is selling for less than what it might otherwise be worth and be able to identify the issues and deal with them. In the case of curb appeal there are many homes out there that don't have the appeal that they could have. Remember, however, there is nothing you or I can do about location. It might improve, it might not...we can only look at trends.
In the best situations we get a deal that immediately leads to equity. I sold a house to a gentleman last year in the "off season". We got an excellent price for it because it was vacant and the sellers really needed to move it. He unfortunately lost his job this summer. We sold the house and he walked away with around $1000 in his pocket. He made an extremely good choice, we bought it at peak time for a deal, he had made small (non costly) improvements that helped, and we marketed the home aggressively.
He truly made the money when buying the house. I remember one alternative home that we had. I truly believe that if he had invested in that particular home it would still be on the market and we would still be hoping for a buyer.
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