Did you sell (or try to sell) your house this past summer/spring?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have one young kid (6) and bought in 1996 -- waaay pre-kids and when all of our also-single peers were spending that same disposable income on $13 Cosmopolitans, courtside Wizards tickets, Vegas trips, status handbags, the 1996 equivalent of "shoo-ties" and Equinox memberships.

We have so much $#@^ equity now it's sick. I could tap that $800,000 I guess and buy my Prada shoes now ...

this must be how it feels like when hitting a $800K jackpot!

How old are you? Most of our friends (almost all in small children mode right now, in their early thirties) were still in college then and definitely not in house buying mode.
I think young families with older parents (40ish?) are more likely to have hit the real estate jackpot just by timing--being at that stage of buying before the market went crazy.

Agreed. She was lucky to have the market run with her age group. I was in high school in 1996 and the picture hasn't been so rosy for my peers, even with the game perfectly played.

[Anonymous]

I think people get too caught up in whether they are losing at one point in time and lose sight that they could make more later. I bought a condo in 1988 and sold it at a $40K loss in 1995. I hated doing this but I really needed a larger place. I bought a bigger condo in a desirable location and then sold it for $350K more in 2004. The 40K loss doesn't bother me anymore because if I had just held onto the much smaller place I would have only made 80K-90K. We bought our existing house in 2004. While it appraised about 6 months ago for the same price we purchased in 2004 based on comps, I'm pretty sure if I actually sold it we would have a 50K loss from the original purchase price. Because there is so much more deflation in the upper market, even if we lost 50K we would probably in a few years make more money on a bigger, newer house. However, I don't want a bigger, newer house and I am too tired to consider moving, so we plan to stay for another 10 years.

If you can afford to lose money at this point in time then I would not worry about losing 6K or even 50K on a condo to move up to a larger house. You will probably come out ahead if you stay long enough and you will enjoy your new house. If you can't afford to lose money or would not have a downpayment for the next house then I would stay put.

[Anonymous]

It really depends on the location and price. Sellers just accepted a contract we put on a house just outside the beltway and the house was on the market since June. It was also priced over $1 million and I think that buyers for THOSE houses are few and far between. We put a bid in drastically lower than the offer price and budged a little, but ultimately got what we viewed was a fair price.

We live in Old Town and have decided not to sell our house right now but to rent it out. We don't need the equity to buy a new house and while we could break even, it just seems better to wait it out for a few years.

As for the poster who mentioned the loss - remember that you still get the interest deduction from your mortgage and presumably part of the mortgage is going to paying down your principal as well, so you may not have a loss at all.

Example, let's say your mortgage is $2k and you rent it out for $1,500, but $500 of the $2k is going toward principal. That is essentially a break even and may even be a gain with the interest deduction (of course, there are also expenses associated with renting, but you get my drift).

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all of your replies, PPs. Keep them coming. Looking ahead to future earnings on a house instead of focusing on a current loss makes me feel a little better. We'll have to be careful where we buy, because I want our next house to be our FOREVER house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: There is no way of knowing what the market will do in the next few years, I no longer listen the so-called experts. in 2008, they said the DC market would be back to normal by 2010...but they were quite wrong.

If by "normal" you mean mid-2000's housing bubble prices fueled by unsustainable mortgages, then no, the market will not return to "normal." If by normal you mean a median income to median home price ratio of about 1:3, as existed when mortgages had 20% down and sufficient income requirements for the fifty years prior to the mid-2000's housing bubble, then prices still have a long way to go down before the market returns to normal.