Sold my house in Frb 2023--the worst time in American history to do so

[Anonymous]

You sold near all time peak prices and by the way stocks have been on a tear since January 2023 so depends what you put money on from sale

[Anonymous]

If you invested the proceeds, then you did better than you think. You likely still netted a great profit. Renters would have trashed your house. You're better off financially to invest the proceeds than to rent it.

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand what’s happening in this post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand what’s happening in this post.

They Sold just as interest rates were going up and they were betting that home prices in general would go down so if they held onto the money for a bit they would be able to get an upgrade for that money.

But housing prices didn’t really go down and they now have to get a higher interest mortgage so will pay more on loan fees than before. This is the reason everyone is sticking it out in unfit houses to hold onto low interest rate mortgages.

I can see how that stinks op. But houses are a place to live not a retirement account. You probably had a lovely life there good schools etc. many people don’t break even they end up under water. That’s a real crisis. You win some and lose some in housing overall.

[Anonymous]

You had to relocate. What choice did you have? You are being too hard on yourself, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sold our house in Feb 2023 due to relocation. It wasn't evident at the time that increasing interest rates wouldn't mean price decreases (yes, it was clear by Spring 2023 but in late 2022/early 2023, sellers were under assumption that prices were going to go down in our DC exurb). I have huge, consuming, nightmarish regret. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have never sold and would have made home a rental. A 2k per month mortgage payment, squandered and gone forever. Proceeds from sale are fine but our course do not have as much value as they would have a few years ago due to rising prices and interest rates, so I feel like I actually made no money from sale, any mortgage payment I get now will be 3k +.
How do you all deal with BIG regrets? Looking for advice. If this happened in my 20s fine, but at mid age, I feel so stupid for having to start over on the property ladder again.

Your math is wrong and you probably failed to invest into the market. Had you just bought Microsoft stock after your sale, you would have turned every $10k into $17k. Was your house going to appreciated 70%? Msft is not a scary stock.
Had you put money into Voo, which is 500 biggest companies, you would have made ca 32%. Did your house go up that much?
Had you bought apple, you wouldn't have made much, but its day may be ahead. It's ok for a company to take a breather.
It's not the house that should bother you, but not knowing how to invest. Open the account and get started.
You will learn a lot about market and it will benefit you for the rest of your life.
I started investing in March 2020 after selling a condo. Work closed down and I had nothing to do but sit on youtube- million financial videos. I have half a million and I started with ca $100k. If I were to lose it all, I could do it again. That's how much I have learned.

[Anonymous]

We sold in Fall 2021 to relocate. We rented and assumed we would buy - but prices and interest rates kept going up and I feel we missed our chance. Nothing I can do about the timing but it sucks. And we're in our 50s.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand. In 2023, house prices were still sky high. How did you not make money on the sale??

And yeah if you put that several hundred thousand in the stock market, you would have made $$$. Where are the proceeds?

[Anonymous]

Rates aren’t permanent. If you need to buy a house just do it and refinance as rates come down.

I sold a house for less than we paid for it in the 90s. We’d lived in it for a couple of years and then rented it out. Renting was a PITA and caused damage to the house which we had to fix to sell. But the issue was we bought at a peak and the market had dropped like a rock. That’s not at all what happened in 2023 so you will be just fine OP. Heck even if you just put your money in a 5% savings account you did okay.

[Anonymous]

But even if put it in cash money markets are paying near 5

[Anonymous]

I blame all the late night infomercials about real estate investing for people thinking that's the best way to invest. Real estate is a huge headache (maintenance, contractors, property taxes, annoying neighbors, terrible tenants), versus just investing in index funds.

Real estate investing can make sense for a small group of people as a full-time job (where you can get economies of scale for having dozens of properties), but having one or two properties doesn't make sense. It's always after periods like the last few years -- where real estate appreciation was crazy -- that people tend to think this is the norm, and they forget that for the preceding 15 years, real estate prices nationwide were flat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sold our house in Feb 2023 due to relocation. It wasn't evident at the time that increasing interest rates wouldn't mean price decreases (yes, it was clear by Spring 2023 but in late 2022/early 2023, sellers were under assumption that prices were going to go down in our DC exurb). I have huge, consuming, nightmarish regret. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have never sold and would have made home a rental. A 2k per month mortgage payment, squandered and gone forever. Proceeds from sale are fine but our course do not have as much value as they would have a few years ago due to rising prices and interest rates, so I feel like I actually made no money from sale, any mortgage payment I get now will be 3k +.
How do you all deal with BIG regrets? Looking for advice. If this happened in my 20s fine, but at mid age, I feel so stupid for having to start over on the property ladder again.

Your math is wrong and you probably failed to invest into the market. Had you just bought Microsoft stock after your sale, you would have turned every $10k into $17k. Was your house going to appreciated 70%? Msft is not a scary stock.
Had you put money into Voo, which is 500 biggest companies, you would have made ca 32%. Did your house go up that much?
Had you bought apple, you wouldn't have made much, but its day may be ahead. It's ok for a company to take a breather.
It's not the house that should bother you, but not knowing how to invest. Open the account and get started.
You will learn a lot about market and it will benefit you for the rest of your life.
I started investing in March 2020 after selling a condo. Work closed down and I had nothing to do but sit on youtube- million financial videos. I have half a million and I started with ca $100k. If I were to lose it all, I could do it again. That's how much I have learned.

You made a ten fold return in 4 years? BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My neighbor rented his house to a nice young man who then brought in a revolving bunch of characters that completely trashed the house. The grass is not always greener.

This. Owning a rental isn’t an investment as much as it is a job. And not everyone is good at that job. You dodged a bullet op.

[Anonymous]

Please move on. You can't do anything about it now. You did the best you could with the information you had at the time. You couldn't have known what the future held.

Grieve, feel the feeling, then move forward. It's better for your health.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP - I did the opposite as you and decided to rent out our first house. I feel a little regret now that I see similar homes selling for way more than I would have expected. But I probably would have regretted it if I sold it. I suspect you and I may have similar views about decisions and regret.

Just enjoy the fact that you had a good sales price and put the money in a long-term investment vehicle.