Selling a house

• justincredible

  

  My wife and I are in the process of selling our house. The market in our neighborhood is at its peak so we are attempting to cash in on that. We bought this house in 2008 right before the housing bubble burst, so it's nice that we are now out of the huge hole we were immediately dropped in. Knowing that our potential payday will be pretty substantial, it's going to end up being worth it when we finally sell, but damn is the process annoying. Luckily we don't have kids to clean up after and wrangle for showings and open houses, but having three dogs makes it a little harder than it could be.
  
  We are also in the process of finding a new house, which has been equally frustrating. A new house will pop on the market that we really like and almost immediately go pending. We've kinda resigned ourselves to the fact that we will probably end up with a fixer-upper that we can customize to our liking. We're fine with the idea now, but had hopes of finding something already done. Our next home will just be a 5-7 year stopgap until we've found land to build on. That will hopefully be our last time selling.
  
  How many houses have you sold over your lifetime? Ever sell without knowing where you're going to end up next?
• majorspark

  

  I have sold two. My wife and I made an offer on the house we currently live in before we sold our last house. The offer was contingent on our last house selling.
• Ironman92

  

  justincredible;1836779 wrote:My wife and I are in the process of selling our house. The market in our neighborhood is at its peak so we are attempting to cash in on that. We bought this house in 2008 right before the housing bubble burst, so it's nice that we are now out of the huge hole we were immediately dropped in. Knowing that our potential payday will be pretty substantial, it's going to end up being worth it when we finally sell, but damn is the process annoying. Luckily we don't have kids to clean up after and wrangle for showings and open houses, but having three dogs makes it a little harder than it could be.
  
  We are also in the process of finding a new house, which has been equally frustrating. A new house will pop on the market that we really like and almost immediately go pending. We've kinda resigned ourselves to the fact that we will probably end up with a fixer-upper that we can customize to our liking. We're fine with the idea now, but had hopes of finding something already done. Our next home will just be a 5-7 year stopgap until we've found land to build on. That will hopefully be our last time selling.
  
  How many houses have you sold over your lifetime? Ever sell without knowing where you're going to end up next?

  Bought two (both were considerably better deals than everything else we looked at in that price range, both were houses of retired elderly people and there wasn't any haggling)
  
  We sold the first one and profited $12,000 even though we didn't make any home improvements of note.
  
  4 years ago we played with selling our current house but things were not falling into place easily and it was basically just see if we could fall into something.
• Zunardo

  Sold my first house after 3 years for 3K more with absolutely no improvements. Sold the second house after 19 months for 4K more, again with zero improvements. We've lived in the third one since 1991. Have always told my wife we're staying put unless we hit the lottery.
• Benny The Jet

  

  Talked my wife into buying a sherif sale house for our first house. It took some guts to buy a house you've never seen the inside of before, but she trusted my dad and I could fix it up how we wanted it. Sold it 2 years later for a nice profit which we then used on a house we both really liked and will be our long term home. Would love to do it again if given the right opportunity
• Spock

  

  Bought my first house at age 20. A big $50,000. Did all kids of work by myself. Sold it for $80,000 5 years later. Bought and sold another property that I owned for 14 years and has $54,000 in equity. Currently live in a house we built 2 years ago. Probably have $55,000 in equity now. Likely sell it at retirement and pocket over $100,000
• Belly35

  

  Wife and I have bought 4 homes and sold by owner 3
  
  our last home (one we live in now) we bought but was still occupied our old home. With three girls and two mortgage I was totally freaked. After returning from Disney Land my oldest daughter ask if we were still sell our home with out a sign in the yard. we took it down before leaving on vacation. She said tha God can't help if he not sure what you want. It was Saturday I put out a new sign. Went to work Monday, wife called me ( no cell phone ) she said that a lady is sitting in our living room with a check for the total asking amount. I drove home asap the lady agreed to write two checks one check was for the holding contract and the others was for the total amount written at the bank where our mortgage was help. The bank closing dept. handed the closing, my lawyer handed the deed and legal aspect.
  
  Thirty day later closed, money in bank, funds transfer on to our new home mortgage.
  
  out of the three home I bought fixed up, lived in and sold I profited 80000.00
• OSH

  

  On our first house right now. Hopefully will have to sell it between now and December or May 2018 (at the latest). Really just depends on the job outlook. We really want to move, but we cannot move without the jobs in hand first.
  
  Not looking forward to the potential timetable in selling here. Neighbor's house was on the market for 7 months before they unloaded. Our house was on the market for 10 months before we bought it. Just not a high traffic area for buying/selling.
• ernest_t_bass

  

  Justin,
  
  Didn't you want to move to the country on a farm? Is this no longer in the plans? I feel like we haven't spoken in years. Where has the time gone?
• ernest_t_bass

  

  I've bought 3, sold 1.
  
  - My first home I still own, and we rent it out. Kinda break even, really.
  - Second home only made about ~$5k capital gains over buying price.
  - Third home we live in.
• Fab4Runner

  

  Haven't sold a house. We bought one, and are hoping to buy a second in the next few months.
• justincredible

  

  ernest_t_bass;1837118 wrote:Justin,
  
  Didn't you want to move to the country on a farm? Is this no longer in the plans? I feel like we haven't spoken in years. Where has the time gone?

  The land we eventually build on will be in the country and large enough for hobby farming. I'm looking for a minimum of 5 acres, but hoping to find 10 or more.
• ernest_t_bass

  

  justincredible;1837125 wrote:The land we eventually build on will be in the country and large enough for hobby farming. I'm looking for a minimum of 5 acres, but hoping to find 10 or more.

  We have 5.78. We take care of about 2.5-3. It's a pain in the ass.
• justincredible

  

  Take care of, as in mow?
• FatHobbit

  

  justincredible;1837125 wrote:The land we eventually build on will be in the country and large enough for hobby farming. I'm looking for a minimum of 5 acres, but hoping to find 10 or more.

  I have 5 acres. My neighbors bought two lots and have 10. I wish I would have done that.
• salto

  

  You probably would get a lot more offered, if you had the original porch furniture that got stolen.
• Belly35

  

  Few years ago i wanted to buy a lake front property/w house but I couldnt find anything I really liked. I want it to be 3 to 4 hour drive from my home, clean and non public. I visited Little long lake in Mich. and really loved it. want something like that... I'm still interested in buying lake front property but it has to be imo the perfect buy.What I want.
• Con_Alma

  Belly35;1837175 wrote:Few years ago i wanted to buy a lake front property/w house but I couldnt find anything I really liked. I want it to be 3 to 4 hour drive from my home, clean and non public. I visited Little long lake in Mich. and really loved it. want something like that... I'm still interested in buying lake front property but it has to be imo the perfect buy.What I want.

  I bought land on the lake and then had built what I wanted.
• j_crazy

  

  I've sold several with varying degrees of profits/losses. I've always known where I was going next (most cases I owned the new house before selling the old one) as all of my moves were as a result of the company transferring me. Bear in mind that if I sell a house in under 90 days, I get 7% of the selling price as a bonus from my company and if I don't sell it before 90 days, the company buys it based off of the average of 2 appraisals.
  
  Here's a quick recap:
  
  Cody, WY - sold in 20 days - $0 profit - February 2008
  Riverton, WY - sold in 90 days - $95,000 loss - in the bottom of the housing burst July 2009
  Lafayette, LA - sold in 3 days - $15,000 profit - April 2012
  Katy, TX - sold in 90 days - $65,000 profit - July 2016
• ernest_t_bass

  

  justincredible;1837165 wrote:Take care of, as in mow?

  Yeah. Mow, trim, etc.
• justincredible

  

  It's not at all frustrating when you have a showing scheduled from 10:15-10:45 so you work from home in the morning and get the 3 dogs loaded in the car and sit out front, using the wifi so I can still get some work done and you get a call at 10:25 saying that they can't get here until 10:45, is that still okay?
• ernest_t_bass

  

  Yes. Or is no the answer you're looking for?
  
  House prep for showing is the worst.
• Ironman92

  

  ernest_t_bass;1839411 wrote:Yes. Or is no the answer you're looking for?
  
  House prep for showing is the worst.

  This
• Commander of Awesome

  

  justincredible;1839408 wrote:It's not at all frustrating when you have a showing scheduled from 10:15-10:45 so you work from home in the morning and get the 3 dogs loaded in the car and sit out front, using the wifi so I can still get some work done and you get a call at 10:25 saying that they can't get here until 10:45, is that still okay?

  Move to the bay area, housing is so fucking competitive you'll have offers for $40k over asking price sight unseen.
• Benny The Jet

  

  justincredible;1839408 wrote:It's not at all frustrating when you have a showing scheduled from 10:15-10:45 so you work from home in the morning and get the 3 dogs loaded in the car and sit out front, using the wifi so I can still get some work done and you get a call at 10:25 saying that they can't get here until 10:45, is that still okay?

  Ha, I don't miss those days. I can remember piling up 2 dogs,wife,kid into car and trying to find something to do for an hour only to come back and car's still in driveway. Rushing around trying to clean up the house like that's the normal way it looks. All worth it in the end when someone buys it though.