If you're selling your home in this current market, your first inclination might be to fixate on how much you paid for your home and cringe when your REALTOR® suggests how you should price your home based on market figures. You might mutter something about how you're giving the house away, especially since you remodeled the bathroom and put on a new roof in your years there. A good REALTOR® will offer you a mind-alerting revelation. You have to see the big picture!
Assuming that you are buying another home, you will benefit from the "buyer's market" environment. Another seller who has put work into his home, who has made desirable improvements in it, is also selling it at a price below what it might have been worth a couple years ago. If the owner has finished the basement, added a deck, and replaced the windows, you now have the opportunity to buy a home that includes all the upgrades and updates at a much lower price.
In the Chicago market, I have seen this time and time again. One recent example that comes to mind is my clients, sellers in Albany Park who just "lost" $29,000 on the sale of their condo that they purchased new in April 2004. In return, however, they just purchased a single family house in a short sale, and paid $140,000 less than the last owner, who additionally finished the basement and paved the patio.
My clients were able to make the move they wanted in their time frame, without putting their life on hold 
waiting for the market to achieve a gain on their sale. Another owner in the same building said she was "morally opposed" to selling her condo for less than the price for which it was purchased. My clients were "morally opposed" to not cashing in on the opportunities our current market presents! When you are both a seller and a buyer, your "losses" as a seller are more than compensated by your "gains" as buyer. See the big picture.
Karen Breen Elia and Louis Elia will draw the big picture for you and show you great values in North Side properties. Visit Chicagocityhomes today.
Comments(3)