So I finally got a constructive comment on one of my blogs. This is good, as I thought that my blogs weren't 'featured' or 'professional' and travelled through the list pretty quick, being in the 'all' category, and would probably be ignored or missed by most.
Today I went to an open house with another realtor. Probably wasn't the smartest thing, as it was Grey Cup Sunday here in Canada, and we had a grand total of one visitor. For those of you in the US, the Grey Cup is the Canadian Football championship, and probably didn't have a large effect on your commerce. The one good thing that came of it is that I was telling the realtor that we currently have our personal house listed, and he actually called our realtor tonight and set up a showing for one of his buyers. Maybe we'll get lucky.
But the client walked in (already pre-approved unfortunately) at that time, and asked why I would be foolish enough to list my home in this market and I took the time to explain my personal philosophy to them.
First of all, we're not in an all fired up hurry to unload our home. It's a great house, in a great neighborhood, with great people living up here. The only reason that we're moving is that we are just a tad bit too far out of town. With two teenagers playing sports, attending school, and going to friends homes, my wife and I feel like we live in our cars. We are both mortgage brokers and losing an extra hour a day due to the multiple trips into town and back is frustrating.
Secondly, as our prices come down, so do the others in this market. We are moving from a depressed market to a depressed market and are only looking to downsize by a certain spread. I am hoping to walk away from this house putting $100,000 in our pocket. We started out listed at $589,900 and were looking at homes in the $499,000 and down price range. We are currently listed at $519,000 and those same homes we are looking at are selling for $399,000 and down.
Our realtor is young and seems concerned that we won't be getting enough for our home, but I tried to explain to him that I don't care if we sell for 600 and buy for 500 we walk away with 100 in our pocket. If we sell for 200, and can find what we like for 100, we still have the 100 in our pocket, and save on Realtor fees and Property Transfer Tax. I know you don't like to hear this, but in this situation the only people losing out here are the Realtor and the Government.
I just hope that we sell in the buyer's market as I am actually more concerned about where we are moving and getting what we want, than I am about where we're moving from and getting rid of what we don't want. She liked this example as she was in the same boat (downsizing) and has been told by numerous sources that she doesn't want to do that in this market.
I find it actually kind of nice that we are non-motivated sellers in a buyers market.
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