Time to move on from a house with trauma? ... 142

#realestateagent #advice #sell

Deerwood Realty and Friends Podcast

Saw a story about a fellow who is going through the process of deciding whether or not to list an inherited house and I kinda wanted to walk through the process

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Pertinent facts
a. Fellow inherits home after his father passes away about 7 years ago
b. He currently lives there with his fiancé. They have done work to the home but he just can’t get over the trauma.
c. House needs work. He owes 135k on the house and a house across the street sold for 280, he was appraised at 269
d. The house has issues. Foundation issue is the biggest one..but the rest of the issues are issues a typical seller worries about that a buyer won’t, if priced right.

Thoughts:

1. To me, this seems like an obvious move. Why would you stay in a house for 7 years where you are haunted by trauma? That doesn’t make any sense to me. But am I just biased because I am a real estate agent?

2. My biggest concern is this question…if you sell today, in a hot market, where are you going? New buyers aren’t likely going to want to wait for you to find a new home, and will you be able to buy something better than what you currently have?

3. If not for the trauma, does a refinance make sense given the low rates and then getting that house in great shape? Probably. But the trauma hasn’t gone away in 7 years, I don’t know that it’s ever going away

4. What does the fiancé say? Seems like she would have an opinion. Maybe she likes a different part of town, maybe a different style of home? Seems like a good question to ask.

5. There’s talk about the home being dated and having foundation issues. You can look at this a few different ways.
a. Look at getting the foundation repaired and then listed
b. Don’t make any more repairs and sell as is
c. Continue to make cosmetic repairs and hope a buyer doesn’t care(which oddly enough, happens a lot)

But a lot of these issues you are seeing with the house are issues that you have with the house and not issues that others would particularly care about given this market.

6. Is it possible that you could get a pre-approval for a mortgage without selling your house first at a level where you could buy something you and your fiancé would like? The way to know that is to go apply. The worst thing that happens is that you can’t be pre-approved, but that makes your decision to sell moot.

7. I like to work off of knowns. That is, when we have something that we don’t know, can we find out the information so that we can make a better decision? In this case we have a number of unknowns.
a. How much is it going to cost to fix up the house?
b. How much is the house that you want going to cost?
c. Can you get a pre-approval for a mortgage to move somewhere you want?
d. What will the housing market look like next month or next year?

Some of these things we can get information for.
a. We can get contractor estimates for repairs and updates
b. We can talk to an agent and go look at homes to see if they make any sense
c. You can apply for a mortgage to get a pre-approval
d. We don’t know what the market will do in the future, but we do have a pretty good idea that we are still in a strong market.

8. The bottom line though is that you want to move because of trauma, and you probably should. The reason you want to move doesn’t have as much to do with logic as it does emotion, something we recognize as real estate agents. It really doesn’t matter logically from this standpoint.

9. My advice then, is to look for a new home now, assuming you can get approved for a mortgage. It’s going to take you a while to find a house you like and actually get it under contract. Once you have a home under contract, put your current home up for sale as is. Should the market take a turn, then deal with it then….if you have to make improvements to get someone to buy the house, do it then.

10. What do you think? What would you do in this situation? Let me know in the comment section.

Source: ME

media@deerwoodrealtystl.com

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