How long did it take to sell your home?

[Tanya in KS]

How long did it take to sell your home in this economy?? How about if you live in a rural community in town??

 

Obviously, we are trying to sell our home. Husband has taken a new job in the the new town and we are separated as a family.

 

Please pray for a quick sale! With everything else going on with our daughter, we would really like to be together.

 

Thanks!

[AngelaNYC]

Buy a small statue of St. Joseph. Bury it upside-down somewhere in front of your home. Your home will sell.

 

 

:D

[Pretty in Pink]

It took us about 9 months, and we only sold at that point because we were willing to take a substantial loss (as in, we had to take out a loan to cover the loss and we are still paying it off over a year later).

[Mabelen]

Our townhouse in the suburbs of a big metro area was under contract in two weeks. We did a lot of prep work and waited for the season to arrive before putting it on the market. We had been in that house long enough to build equity so the sale price was reasonable for the market.

 

I wish you all the best. We were also separated for several months and it is no fun.

[Hillary in KS]

We sold our home in 4 months.

 

There were 5 other houses for sale on our *block*.

 

This was in Topeka, KS, if that helps.

[Sherry in OH]

In contract 2 weeks after listing. We met with a realtor a few months before listing it and followed her advice regarding prep work and reasonable asking price.

 

We lived in a mid-sized city.

[Momling]

It took us only two days to sell our house in a bad housing market. There were plenty of foreclosures on our street, urban, pretty unsafe neighborhood. We got two offers at full asking price (but unfortunately no bidding war).

 

I think that two things that helped were:

 

- having the house in move-in ready condition before listing it -- we refinished the floors, repainted the walls, fixed up the bathroom nicely (which we saw as the weakest part of the house), deep-cleaned the house and mimized our footprint in the house. Basically, whatever we thought a buyer might balk at, we fixed in advance.

 

- pricing the house based on listing price of comparable sized houses in our neighborhood (knowing that ours looked nicer and required less work than others). We wanted potential buyers in our price range to see our house as better than the others listed at the same price and jump at ours. We had to get over the idea that our purchase price (bought at the height of the market) had any relevance to the sale price.

 

Despite our losses in the housing market, we're set to buy again. Now the tables are turned as we are buying a house at a really nice price (considerably less than it was sold for 4 years ago). So it all evens out in the end!

[Tap]

1 mth but that was 10 years ago.

[KidsHappen]

Nine months and that was before the economy tanked. Houses in our neighborhood are still selling strongly though.

[....]

We never could sell our house - this was in a middle-class suburb of St Louis, MO (on the MO side of the river).

 

We took it off the market and currently rent it out.

 

The realtor wanted us to sell it for $30,000 less than what we owe (how are we going to come up with THAT amount of money??).

 

We were also separated for 8 months - good luck. It sucks. I hope yours sells.

[rafiki]

.

[The Girls' Mom]

Ours has been on the market for 7 months, and still hasn't sold.

[FaithManor]

We sold our old place in six weeks. However, that was before the worst of the economic mess hit Michigan so we managed to sell about six months before all of the reposessions began flooding the market.

 

That said, we had already lost a lot of equity. We sold the house for 55% less than what it had appraised for three years earlier. Thankfully, we had it nearly paid off, so though we took a real hit on the real estate investment, we didn't end up stuck with it either.

 

We sold by owner. However, I don't know that we would ever do that again. We were able to do so because the little town that the house was located in is a high demand area with lots of people who have lived there on property they've inherited - many farms within the same family for well over 100 years. Since there weren't any other houses on the market, that helped us alot. Around our current area, I'd say that it would take two years to sell a house and one wouldn't get much for it. A local town of 1500 people has 82 repossessed houses on the market. Its crazy!

 

Faith - Wishing all the best to those of you needing to sell your house!

[Brigitte]

Your realtor can tell you how long comparable houses were on the market before selling. If you don't know already, ask for what their list prices were and what they sold for. When selling, you need to be armed with lots of information, as much as you would when buying.

[babysparkler]

I saw on the news yesterday that the average right now is 60-days. I don't know if that is a local statistic or not.

[....]

Yeah, be careful, people are looking to rip you off right now. The one bid we had was like $40,000 less than what we owe. We also came RIGHT out and told them that we owe such and such amount of money. We actually told our realtor to tell the bidder what we owe on the house. I don't know how they expected us to sell it to them and bring 40 Grand with us at closing. Why wouldn't we just hold onto it or rent it out until the market rebounds instead of trying to come up with $40,000? Or you gain a little more equity? It's craziness out there right now.

[....]

Oh, yeah, and as far as competing with foreclosures...:rant: We looked at about 10 foreclosures and they w e r e TRASHED. They looked OK from the outside, but you could tell the people were p&ssed and just trashing everything. In one house, they lit the carpet on fire. Our house was immaculate inside with brand new carpeting. :banghead: Can you tell I'm still angry?

[....]

I saw on the news yesterday that the average right now is 60-days. I don't know if that is a local statistic or not.

 

Yeah, that's probably accurate for Texas. It's like the Great Depression in other places - like Michigan, St Louis, etc...

 

This is why I look around and see so many out of state plates here.

[T'smom]

It took us 15 months and we ended up spending 13,000 to sell. It wasn't that we sold for less than we owed- but they wanted the basement waterproofed, us to pay closing costs, a home warranty, etc. They also wanted us to leave the washer/dryer, etc.

Several of the houses we are now considering have been on the market for nearly a year. One was on the market way back when my husband took the job he has now, they took it off for probably 6 months, then relisted it at about 20,000 less!

But it depends a lot on location and we're a long ways from Kansas! I hope you have better luck. If we had it to do over again, we'd consider renting it out. Yeah, renters might damage it- but I doubt they would've done more than 13,000 worth!

[Debbi in Texas]

It took 2 years and we took a loss. We actually sold it for what we gave for it (or less), but in the seven years we lived there we had spent a lot of money on it.

 

We rented it for a few months before we sold it and that was not a good deal either.

 

We basically just sold it to get rid of it.

 

Debbi

[Crimson Wife]

We've never sold a home but bought one in December. It went on the market in mid-October and we put our offer in right before Thanksgiving. A similar home directly across the street came on the market the week before ours did. We actually liked that one a bit better but we didn't think the owners were as motivated to sell (the one we bought was an estate sale). That house went off the market in mid-December and the owners did some cosmetic work & staging. It came back on in late January and went into "pending" on April 30th.

 

I'm curious to see what the final sales price is. The owners way overpriced it when they first put it on the market in October. It was about $70k more than what the numbers justified. The final listing price was $100k lower than original asking, and I'm not even sure they'll get that. Zillow estimates the value as $25k less than the final listing price. Though I'm not sure how much I trust Zillow's estimate since it's out of line with their estimates on our home and all the others on the street.

 

If you want to sell your home quickly, I agree about having it "move-in" ready and priced right.

[Susan in TN]

6 months in a metro area (closed a year ago). Average selling time (before burst bubble) was about 60 days. We went down 20K on the original asking price (15%).

[athena1277]

Our house in AL did not sell. or rent. :( Then the bank gave us the run-around. They got their house back and we got our credit trashed.

[Crimson Wife]

Yeah, be careful, people are looking to rip you off right now. The one bid we had was like $40,000 less than what we owe. We also came RIGHT out and told them that we owe such and such amount of money. We actually told our realtor to tell the bidder what we owe on the house.

 

I hate to sound heartless, but what you paid for your house is irrelevant. It's not my problem as a buyer that you overpaid during the bubble. If the seller had told us that they owed more on the house that its current value, we would've said that we're not bidding on what the house used to be worth but rather what it's worth now. If they had refused to take our offer, we simply would've moved on to the next home. There is a TON of inventory out there right now, we would've have wasted our time with someone not motivated to sell.

[justamouse]

2 years 8 months, and we dropped the price over a hundred thousand dollars and we bought in the last real estate low-8 years ago. Actually it wasn't a low-it was before the market bubble started. In those 8 years we redid the whole house, bathrooms, kitchen, everything and we're making nothing on our sale-we're not LOOSING but we're not making anything.

Edited May 26, 2010 by justamouse

[justamouse]

I hate to sound heartless, but what you paid for your house is irrelevant. It's not my problem as a buyer that you overpaid during the bubble. If the seller had told us that they owed more on the house that its current value, we would've said that we're not bidding on what the house used to be worth but rather what it's worth now. If they had refused to take our offer, we simply would've moved on to the next home. There is a TON of inventory out there right now, we would've have wasted our time with someone not motivated to sell.

 

Yup. There's so much out there we just moved on from people who gave us amounts that they owed. Those were overinflated prices they paid, and it's not up to me to help people out by repaying for their mistakes. It does sound heartless, I know, but that is just the situation. It's not the buyers fault the owners paid too much.

 

The house we bought came down 300k from it's original price two years ago.

Edited May 26, 2010 by justamouse

[Renee in NC]

Our house in AL did not sell. or rent. :( Then the bank gave us the run-around. They got their house back and we got our credit trashed.

 

Same here. We even tried a short sale. Bank rejected it and foreclosed. Same couple that made the original offer bought the house after foreclosure for what the bank had already turned down. Why they didn't just skip the foreclosure and go for the short sale, I don't know.

[JenC3]

We sold last August. It took 11 days.

Small town suburb outside of a mid-size city, between Atlanta an Charlotte.

House was 1500 sq ft, a 3/2. We landscaped the front, updated the baths, painted and did some lighting and hardware updates as well. We owned it for 5.5 yrs and sold for about $20k more than what we bought so no loss taken, but of course if we had sold the year before we could have gotten 10-15k more. Our market is actually one of the most stable in the country.

[Tree Frog]

We did a lot of prep work and waited for the season to arrive before putting it on the market. We had been in that house long enough to build equity so the sale price was reasonable for the market.

 

I wish you all the best. We were also separated for several months and it is no fun.

 

I think that two things that helped were:

 

- having the house in move-in ready condition before listing it -- we refinished the floors, repainted the walls, fixed up the bathroom nicely (which we saw as the weakest part of the house), deep-cleaned the house and mimized our footprint in the house. Basically, whatever we thought a buyer might balk at, we fixed in advance.

 

- pricing the house based on listing price of comparable sized houses in our neighborhood (knowing that ours looked nicer and required less work than others). We wanted potential buyers in our price range to see our house as better than the others listed at the same price and jump at ours. We had to get over the idea that our purchase price (bought at the height of the market) had any relevance to the sale price.

 

 

If you want to sell your home quickly, I agree about having it "move-in" ready and priced right.

 

 

Ours will be closing next week. In the nearly 3 years we've lived here, we've had a new roof put on, purchased a shed, had significant electrical work done in the basement, installed a new water heater, oven, and dishwasher, did some landscaping, repainted nearly the entire interior of the house, and paid ahead on the mortgage. We easily put more than $10,000 into the house while we were here. Some items were anticipated (we knew we needed better lighting in the basement) and some were entirely unexpected (needing a new roof). We knew we wouldn't be staying, so everything we did was with the anticipation of selling quickly/easily. We didn't make improvements for our particular taste, but made sure everything was all neutral. We live in a rural area where houses are typically on the market for a year or more, but ours sold within about 3 weeks. We had only 1 showing, not through our realtor, but due to an e-mail my dh had sent out. I believe having a move in ready house is what made the difference. We staged it by renting a storage area for $25/mo and eliminating what we could within the house. All our shelves were very sparse, the kitchen looked like it had plenty of space (unfortunately, we have missed some items I wish we hadn't packed!), and it didn't look like we had 3 kids living and homeschooling here.

 

We also looked on the internet to see what comparable houses were selling for. One of the things we found was that sellers were coming down about $12k off their asking price, so we priced it so we could do that if we needed. Something that worked in our favor was that there aren't a lot of 4 bedroom houses like ours available; most of the houses for sale are 100+ years old and need a lot of updating.

 

It was a lot of work and a lot of money and between our realtor costs and the final offer on the house, we will owe at closing. However, it's worth it not to have dh living in a different part of the country and me here with our kids by ourselves.

[sewpeaceful]

4 months BUT we, like other posters, made the house move in ready. We followed everything our agent said:

 

1. Make sure there are stunning photos of your house online - at least a dozen.

2. All paint touched up.

3. Declutter, even your beloved bookshelves - pack away what you can.

4. Put extra furniture in a storage unit, friend's garage, where ever you can find a place.

5. Update the light fixtures - no brass chandeliers, etc.

6. Plant some flowers in the front.

7. No personal pictures. You want them to imagine their family in the house, not yours. This was a tough one for me.

 

In the end, our realtors evaluated what WAS selling in our market by looking at photos of homes sold in the past 60 days. 10 houses sold and every single one had granite countertops (suburban Houston). We bit the bullet, spent $5 K to put in new counters, sink, cooktop, and faucets (I had a HUGE kitchen - most kitchens would cost half that from Lowes, grade A granite). The house sold 2 days after we put in the counters, full cash offer.

 

I suggest you ask your agent to look at what IS selling. What are the trends? What do the houses look like? I know how mentally difficult it was for us to drop $6K on preparing the house to sell (lighting, paint, countertops, clean carpets, etc) but in the end, my family doesn't have to be apart when my dh goes to his next job (we are part of the NASA cut backs - yippee). In the end, $6K was well worth it to keep our family together. You may not have to spend NEARLY as much, and maybe you do, but again, worth it in the end.

 

I wish you luck. I understand your fears. May I pray for you and your family? We have our own cross to bear but I won't bore you with our details. :)

[AngieW in Texas]

We sold our previous home 6 years ago. The economy was in awful shape in the area because the telecom field had collapsed and it was the center of the industry. Our house was on 2 acres in a semirural area a few miles outside town. We could get just about anywhere within 30 minutes, but it took at least 20 minutes to get anywhere.

 

Our house was on the market for 11 months and a few weeks. We ended up selling for less than we owed on it, so we had to write a check at a closing. At that point, we were just happy to not be paying for it anymore.

[Guest Puritanmama]

How long did it take to sell your home in this economy?? How about if you live in a rural community in town??

 

Obviously, we are trying to sell our home. Husband has taken a new job in the the new town and we are separated as a family.

 

Please pray for a quick sale! With everything else going on with our daughter, we would really like to be together.

 

Thanks!

 

Sold our house in Kansas in three months. Our realtor there said 3 months is average right now.

HTH