The good news is that existing home sales are up 9.2 percent from last September. The bad news is that average sale prices are down 8.5 percent. So it seems that if you're looking to sell your house you might have a better luck now in finding a buyer. But don't expect to get top dollar.I think many potential sellers in an area like Northern Virginia are feeling some relief knowing they can unload their homes if they have to in this still-struggling economy. Home ownership has many benefits, but mobility isn't always one of them. If you lose your job or have to move out of state for personal or professional reasons, a mortgage can be like a ball and chain.
Homes don't always appreciate in value, regardless of the economy, and aren't always easy to sell. Mortgages can potentially create a nasty trap. I owned a modest townhouse in Florida for five years in the 1980s and didn't make a dime on the sale of it. Yet, I had to move before it was even sold. Talk about pressure.
We owned a condo in Manassas, Va., in the 1990s that took nearly seven years before it modestly increased in value. The second it went up, we sold for fear of never being able to get out of the tiny, apartment-like dwelling if we didn't strike while the market was hot.
Today's news of existing homes selling faster is good to hear. As the future appears more cloudy by the day, one needs options in order to simply survive. Being able to sell our house gives us an out, allowing us to move to cheaper digs if the job market continues to worsen. Perhaps it's not an ideal option, but at least it's not another impassable obstacle. Of course, if prices continue to fall, there will come a time when selling is no longer financially feasible. So as I mentioned in an earlier post, the pressure is on to figure out whether to stay or go.
It appears that this recession is creating a vicious vortex in many ways. Once you get caught in it - through job loss, real estate issues or other hardships - it's difficult to find your way back to a relatively sane existence. For the first time in my life, traditional methods of getting back on my feet aren't working. I find myself clinging to every piece of good news that I can find, including today's real estate report. Unfortunately, each tidbit of positive news seems to be followed by a wave of new disappointments. It gets tiring to say the least.
My brother got caught in the vortex you write about, and it hasn't been pretty.
ReplyDeleteAn actuary, early last year he moved his family to Lynchburg, Virginia for a much higher salary with a new company. They bought a big house in a nice neighborhood, just before the real estate bubble there collapsed.
Just months after he got there, the company closed its operations in Lynchburg and laid off a bunch of highly paid staff members, including my brother.
He was lucky. He was able to quickly find a comparable gig with another insurance company in Georgia, but his McMansion in Virginia has been sitting empty for months in a dead real estate market. When his former employer closed their operations there, a bunch of nice, big houses were for sale all at once in a very small market.
Right now, my brother, his wife and his two pre-teen kids are living in a modest apartment in Georgia praying their house will sell at some point, even at a deep loss, so they can get on with their financial lives.