Reply to Why do expert say: Buckle in for a brutal free-fall in home prices

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I get DCUM is full of the 1.7m starter home people, but this is still how it is for most people. Even back when rates were low. I owned a tiny 1 bedroom apartment I bought for 200k out of grad school, and when I got married we upgraded to a 2 bedroom condo in a slightly better neighborhoods neighborhood for 450k, using  combo of sake proceeds and savings to make that an easy purchase. We are now looking to move to a SFH with good schools. Looking at fixer uppers around 600k so we can keep payments low. Most important thing is fantastic schools.
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Please define 'fixer upper'.[/quote]

Yes, how do you define 'fixer upper'?[/quote]

I am the PP who wrote this. I define fixer upper as a house with outdated kitchens and baths, likely a few glaring aesthetic issues (wood paneling, flooring that needs replacing, maybe a crumbling porch that needs new steps), as well as one or two major issues (in need of new windows, requiring an HVAC overhaul, potentially even something structural depending on what it was). I also assume the exterior is going to need work, both on the house itself and things like landscaping and hardscaping.

But importantly, a fixer-upper has to be something you can live in while you fix it. So nothing unsafe or unlivable. We've looked at homes that don't have kitchens. That's an investment property that you might consider living in once you've fixed it, but it's not a "fixer-upper."

As for pricing, we have seen houses in our price range in this condition or better. Some have school issues (we've seen a bunch we like in PG county but are not ready to pull the trigger on private schools and just don't like what we hear about the schools there). I think our best bet is Wheaton/Forrest Glen/Kensington area. There are some lovely schools there and older housing stock that still includes quite a few un-upgraded homes. We're also looking at a few places further out -- Annandale in VA (on the fence about schools) or Laurel/Columbia in MD (great schools and housing is pretty affordable from what we've seen), but if we can find something closer in and reasonably metro or bus accessible, that would be preferable.

The real issue is selling our condo. We just watched a lot of condos in our neighborhood sit on the market all summer. In some cases the issue is price, but in others it really seems like there just is not a a good market for condos at the moment -- we saw some of what we thought were well priced condos sit and sit and eventually turn rental and it scared us off listing. Our place is in good but not perfect condition, and I think the key with condo sales at the moment is that people want perfect, because there are also a lot of brand new condos on the market. If we can do some targeted upgrades to make our place look more like the brand new ones, but list lower since we bought in 2015 and have more wiggle room there, I think we'll be okay. But this summer/fall have been pretty brutal for condo sales, at least in our corner of the market.[/quote]

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