We keep saying this…
We sold our house after it being on the market for… four whole days. We didn’t even have time to do staging or anything, it sold so fast. When this happened we were ecstatic but also wondering if we priced it too low, especially since we sold it for only $900 less than the asking price. The house had issues and the front yard was completely torn up from the work we started and the trees we had to drop. But shortly afterwards the market took a dive and we keep saying, “Thank our lucky stars we got out from under that house when we did”. Especially when I read articles like this: Area home sellers ready to bargain
After going through the experience of buying a house twice, and selling a house once, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with real estate. Every time I see a house up for sale in our neighborhood I look it up online, check out the pictures, check out the prices, etc. The other day Jack was telling the kids how many states he’s been in and how he lived in Arizona for a while. I said “yuck” to this. Too hot. He said no, it was great because it was dry heat and didn’t feel anything like it does here when it gets hot. Even though we have no intentions of every moving out of state, I’m now obsessing on the Arizona market including Scottsdale real estate. It’s interesting to me to see how different prices are for homes from state to state. Sometimes I wonder if this is the field I should get into since it intrigues me so much. On the other hand, with the stagnant house sales lately I’m glad this is not what we rely on to pay our bills.
When we visited Arizona this past spring for our wedding/vacation, it was gorgeous during the day. At night though the temperature dropped below freezing for a while. Of course, this is common in the desert. Anyway, from a one time visitors opinion, Arizona is beautiful and there are a ton of beautiful homes there, and also a ton of run down shacks… I would certainly consider living there but I’d have to really think hard about where. Some places are simply too grungy and too poor (sadly to say).
Anyway, enough about Arizona… The reason for my comment, is that Kim and I (more so Kim) have been “obsessed” ourselves, with watching the bagillion and one different shows on TLC and HGTV about real estate, property development, flips etc.
We’re constantly watching the market here too and MLS (.ca), and especially in our area (Waterloo) of the Tri-Cities (Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge). We’re not actively looking for a new home ourselves just yet, but we’re keeping up to date on market trends etc, so that we have a good idea of what we’re getting into once we do start actively looking, which will be in about a year and a half to 2 years once we have all our bases covered.
The market here fluctuates often, and there are a ton of Cookie cutter homes going up every day. I can count at least 6 different places in the local area that have new development projects either just recently completed, or are nearly so.
Kim and I are kinda ‘old fashioned’ when it comes to homes… We don’t want these modern “cookie-cutter / no yard / spy-on-my-neighbors” type homes that are going up. Sure they modestly sized, but really with no yard, what good is it? Sure we wouldn’t have to mow the lawn, but what’s the fun in that? So, as it were, we continual look at those older style homes, to see what they’re selling for, and getting a good idea of what we’ll need to come up with to get that first home, and make it a lasting one…. Or at least we’ll end up flipping the first and move on from there.
Jay
Unless you don’t like having quiet weekends and evenings, and unless you hate holidays, don’t get into real estate! The life of a real estate agent is not his/her own. They work all hours of the day and night, weekends and holidays. Well, the ones making lots of money are.
We just spent a week down South trying to find a house and we practically lived with our agent. She barely saw her family the entire week. That poor creature earned every cent of her commission.
We lived in Scottsdale for six months. The non-oppressive six months, Oct - Apr. It was beautiful. Beautiful parks, beautiful mountains, beautiful golf courses and resorts, beautiful everything. We did check our shoes every morning though for scary spider things or other scary creatures.
As far as cookie-cutter homes go… Certain parts of the country don’t offer anything else but cookie-cutter homes. Down South we had a great agent who was able to point out to us the differences and what to avoid so we have great re-sale later on. In the South, you can’t buy a home built on a slab foundation unless you don’t care that you ever sell it in a reasonable timeframe for a reasonable price later on. There is no value in them. Having a crawl space foundation is the only quality way to build a home there. You have to know your local market in order to know if you’re getting a good deal or not. That’s when it pays to have a great real estate agent who is willing to not see her family for a week in order to help you out!
I typed a huge comment! Who ate it?!
Sorry Lorelei.. I think my site has had some issues today.
Jay, you and Kim SHOULD be buying a house!
I found the culprit… Akismet ate it.
I know what you mean about a real estate agent not having a life.. and that’s basically why I’ve stayed out of that field.. but it still intrigues me!
We will be buying a home sooner or later, but right now, with me and my credit (finally have “no credit” for the first time since before college) and our credit as a whole (too much) we wouldn’t qualify for anything substantial, or remotely useful to facilitate the buying of a home.
We have things on track though, and given that we pay less than 900/month rent for the gorgeous 100+ year old house we have (3bdrm, 1 bath+”in house”– pretty much an indoor outhouse complete w/ barn board door and the whole claustrophobic size), office, basement w/ cold storage and two decks (1 upper and 1 lower) we’re more than happy to stick it out for another year or two.
Besides, we’re holding out to see if the owner is maybe interested in selling. haha
Jay, where are my pictures, dangit?? That’d be pretty cool if they sold to you guys, though.
pictures… pictures… ooh you mean the ones that I’ve been promising for ages, and neglect to provide? those pictures?
I’ll see what I can find. like I said, we have some still unprocessed, and some others are ‘missing’ and some others yet, may well be on the broken camera
I’ll find what I can, and post ‘em for ya
[...] no surprise that I’m somewhat obsessed with the housing market so dreaming about buying or selling isn’t that far off. But buying a [...]