i had no idea how stressful.. (update in #8)

[♥ms.pacman♥]

..it is to try to sell a house. OMG. talk about roller coaster of emotions, and major marriage-strainer. :( and this is in a crazy hot, seller's market!! and we MOVED OUT of our house into an apt so we don't even have to scramble to be ready for showings.

the current market for our area, especially our specific neighborhood (5-10 year old homes) is crazy...houses have been typically selling before they have to list, or getting multiple offers, many over asking, the first day or two it is listed. Yet our house has been on the market 2 WEEKS and not a single offer! It is priced appropriately...right at tax assessment value, somewhat under the zillow estimate and other sites' estimates of comparable homes. We moved out, had the entire house professionally repainted ( and feedback from many confirms the house shows very well). 10 showings so far in the 2 weeks (including 2 open houses that had lots of traffic), a couple second showings, but still..no offers. :( All feedback from showing agents are things we cannot change (the house layout, size of the backyard). Our layout is somewhat unusual for our neighborhood (it's a 1.5 story vs. a traditional 2 story) but i didn't think it was THAT unpopular. And our lot size is comparable to many other homes in our neighborhood.

I don't know. What's dumb is that at this point DH & I are totally willing to take lower than asking (told our realtor this), but there are no offers to entertain... not even lowballs! DH & I were talking, and had we known it be so stressful/difficult to sell, we would have probably just rented it out instead. Then we would have not had to move into an apartment for the summer (would have avoided paying rent for 3 months, moving twice), and we could have just directly moved into our new house in August. Our mortgage on that house is not that high and we could totally make decent amount of $$$ from rent each month. Hindsight is 20/20 of course... :( At this point it seems like renting might be the best option after all if we cannot sell above a certain amount.


We are planning to drop the price after this weekend, but I don't have high hopes, as we don't have any offers yet, and so I don't see how that should make a difference, unless we drop the price so low to the point where it is just ridiculous and makes no sense to sell it in the first place.


We had hopes of getting an offer today (from a couple that said we were out of their price range, but we said we would take less and were open to offers) but..nothing.


and then today, DH met with roofer & insurance guy and insurance wanted roofer to physically touch every source of damage on the roof before doing any sort of inspection....roofer would not (was saying it was too dangerous, didn't want to call a climber) so no inspection was ever done. WTF. So again, we have the insurance telling roofer to do x, roofer refuses to do it, and then insurance saying they then refuse to do anything further. It was horrible.. my DH sounded SO upset when he called me to give me update (and i don't blame him). Have no idea what to do now, except fork up our own money (now up to $17k - roofer increased the estimate) for a new roof bc insurance wont' freaking cover it. Don't even know who can help us at this point. This is a new roofer our realtor recommended, too!!!

it just seems like bad news on top of bad news, all the while we just continue to bleed money and stress out over it. makes me so mad bc it's not like it's a bad market or we're trying to sell an old fixer-upper house with lots of issues..quite the opposite!!! our house is only freaking 7 years old.

So upset right now, I would seriously cry if i were not at work. (T_T)

[kdeunc]

Selling a house stinks! I am sorry it is not going well. I can't believe that you are still fighting over the roof. I think you said you were with State Farm. I had to show my you know what with them to get our hurricane damaged roof repaired. I am extremely non confrontational but in that case I went nuts and my roof was fixed. :) Maybe you need to threaten to call your state's insurance commissioner (or what ever regulatory agency is applicable). Hope you get your roof fixed and an offer soon!!

[HannaAddict]

Price price price. Psychologically price is huge. The selling price shouldn't be set by the tax assessment or zillow but with a thoughtful comp analysis by a good agent who takes into account your less popular floorplan and other one off issues. That market of an almost new house cane be hard too. Houses seem almost like new to the owners but for the money or close to it, many buyers want brand new so the prices can suffer on that almost new market (per my rock star cousin realtor). Hang in there and when you don't get offers in a hot market it is almost always price. As the owner it is so hard, it is really emotional. Even a price drop doesn't have to be huge, it shows you are whining to sell. The roof thing is awful, I would think about filing a complaint with your state insurance commissioner. And asking the roofer to come out prepared to inspect the roof fully. Can't imagine your agent doesn't have some pull to make the roof guy cooperate with insurance company. Good luck and sorry it is so hard! Just takes one buyer!!

[♥ms.pacman♥]

I had to show my you know what with them to get our hurricane damaged roof repaired. I am extremely non confrontational but in that case I went nuts and my roof was fixed. :)

LOL, thanks for this laugh, I totally needed it. And yeah, DH and I (who are also super non-confrontational) are on the brink of going nuts too.

To be fair though, this time around the insurance guy was willing to go on the roof, but the roofer refused. Kept saying things like "if he fell and died, who would pay for his kids' college". Then he said he had a climber to do it but that "he was a Spanish guy and didn't speak English." Crazy sh!t. DH just called a public adjuster and he will come by tomorrow. Hoping something comes out of that...the ins technically has to respond to them. We did talk to our realtor about this roof situation and she said she was unfamiliar with it (?) and referred us names of real estate attorneys, but don't think we should/have to go that route yet. And yes, DH was bothered that our realtor seemed no help at all re: this roof situation..was surprised she had no advice. we definitely feel alone and royally screwed with this part of it.

And HannaAddict - i agree. on Monday we will drop the price if no offers. and a week later will drop price again if the same. i feel like this past weekend sort of hurt us as Sat was 4th of July so minimal traffic...hopefully this weekend will pick up. i'm just so bugged though that everything else around us is selling so fast but ours. I do wonder if it is not staged enough (lots of empty rooms).

[khm]

I'm sorry this is so stressful. Between this and your photo story over in the Lounge... your realtor sounds pretty lazy!! She should do some d@mn research / make some stinking calls for you!

I don't know your market, but Zillow is wildly, wildly off in mine. Assessor amount is so-so, mainly depends on how "old" the last sale was, some neighborhoods (high turnover ones) are pretty accurate but neighborhoods where people stick around, they can be very, very low. Then, they get reassessed and end up crazy high!

I'd sit down and make a list of houses for sale in your area. Find them as close to yours as possible. If no 1.5 stories (love mine!), the chose 2 stories. Match up location, size and age first. For those houses, where are you priced? (DON'T worry about subjective/paint/decor/yard differences - only location, size and age.) Where do you fall in those houses?

Next, price compare against NEW homes - location and size. New construction in our area is huge. You have to make sure you are beating a new house on price/price per SF. If you aren't..... you are in for a long road (in my area at least). An 7 year old house, is sadly, a pretty "bad" age in real estate. It isn't new, but it isn't "newly remodeled" either.

Stuff hasn't died/needed replacing yet, but will certainly do so in the next 5-10 years, and that is on peoples' minds - consciously or unconsciously. Most people, when it comes down to it, will pick the new - with its new furnace, new a/c, new siding, new roof, new carpet, etc etc etc. On the other end, a 10-15 year old house will likely have all that stuff fairly recently updated, so in that case, older homes might "beat" you for buyer attention.

Can you see what stuff actually sold for on your assessor? If so, repeat with recently solds. If you cannot, make a list of recently sold stuff you think is a good comp for your realtor to run for you.

(She really, really should have done all this already!)

[♥ms.pacman♥]

khm- thanks for your post and that is definitely helpful re: looking at new houses. our realtor did run comps to get our price (though most others being sold around it are much higher). We are at $111/sq ft and new homes are $140+/sq ft. So we are definitely under that.

luckily there are not really many older homes in our area..it's largely all other houses 5-10 years old and then few new developments. 4-5 or so years ago it was hard to sell bc yes, lots of inventory with new homes but now that is no longer the case, and the immediate area has gotten built out with libraries, rec centers, schools etc which is helping drive up the prices for everything.

anyway our agent is super nice, and seemed like very experienced (20+ years exp), and helped us find our new house extremely quickly..but we (especially DH) are starting to feel like it's a little ridiculous how much stuff we are having to research and do on our own. Few days ago saying she was thinking of wait 30 days w/ no offers before dropping the price, and we thought that was too long, at least in this market! A house on the market for 30 days seems like a red flag here IMO (esp during the summer)..stuff is typically selling in hours/days with multiple offers unless it's a foreclosure house or FSBO with a crazy starting price.

i asked around online forums and someone (a realtor) mentioned that our problem could be that our listing doesn't mention anywhere it's a 1.5 story at all, and so we may be attracting the wrong buyers who are looking for a 2-story (that was definitely a comment in a couple agent's feedback). i added that to things for realtor to change in the listing...hopefully that will help.

Ugh. Had no idea it would be this hard. My head feels like it's about to explode. And I can tell DH is super stressed out too. DH was telling me last night, after we move in to our new house next month, we are never moving EVER EVER AGAIN.

[ang79]

I feel your pain! This is the second summer our house has been on the market and its such a pain living in limbo (we have to sell before we can afford to build). Unfortunately the market is over saturated with houses for sale around here and houses in my older development seem to move especially slow, unless they are super cheap by foreclosure. Hope your luck turns soon!

[♥ms.pacman♥]

OMG finally got an offer,with a request to close on Jul 28 (!!). the buyers' house has already closed and they are in a 30day leaseback so are super motivated to find a house fast i guess,and they liked the layout. so i guess the empty house thing worked after all?

it is lower than our listing price which is A-OK with me, esp given the early closing date (we will won't have carry 2 mortgages).

crossing fingers the financing etc goes through!! now all we have to do is light a fire under the insurance folks a$$es to deal with the roof situation ASAP before the closing...

[SnuggleBuggles]

Yay!!!!

[BDKmom]

Congrats! Crossing fingers for you that everything goes through and closes with no hiccups. Buying/selling/moving is so stressful!

[khm]

Congrats! Sometimes you get lucky with a bad realtor (or unlucky with a great one)! There is far more luck in real estate than anyone will admit. ;) Just takes one buyer!

[baymom]

Hooray! Happy to hear the update and wishing you smooth sailing through the escrow period!

[Globetrotter]

Yay!! I'm glad you got an offer.

[MamaMolly]

Sending Mojo for a swift closing! :applause: