We are in the same boat. We were ramping up to list our home right before Corona hit.

Now we’ve pulled back a bit.

A house listed in my neighborhood last week and sold at full price in 4 days. So that was good to see.

We are looking to relocate to north Idaho. I am a little concerned about home prices soon (I.e. we buy in ID and then the market tanks in a year and we’re screwed).

As Skins said, we may just sell and then rent for a year in ID to watch the market.

Well Jimmy normally I guess it might be wise to get another appraisal, but our deal isn't contingent on an appraisal so regardless of what it comes out to we are committed to the purchase. Pretty sure the appraisal will already be lower than the price we agreed to pay, the house was on the market one day and they had at least two full price offers. They took another offer initially but it fell through and they then accepted ours. Nice houses in this area have been selling in a couple of days and this would have been the third house we would have missed on, so the wif was very pleased when we got another shot at this one.

I am afraid we probably bought at the top, but we aren't over extended by any means so we will be ok if it takes a while for the market to come back up. Hoping for the best and that we can at least get a decent price in a reasonable amount of time on our current house.

First world problems considering all the financial destruction going on out there.

I coach realtors all over the United States.
I'm a little more optimistic than most about the real estate market. I don't think values will drop much if at all in the short term and will rise again after this all ends.
What is happening in most areas is time on market is expanding from days to weeks. A seller's market is typically measured as less than 6 months of inventory. So, there's a long way to go before we get to a buyers market of 6 months or more.
What almost all of my (85) realtors are struggling with is a long list of buyers that cant get out to physically look at homes and many sellers don't want ther homes shown. They are slowly adjusting to doing transactions "virtually".
Unemployment will hurt (slow down) the market over the short term but I think employment will improve in the months after this is over.

Thank you for the insight amc. That makes me feel better, since our house seems to be "lingering" for a couple weeks longer compared to the pre-shutdown blazing fast market.

quote:

Originally posted by Sigfan Roy:
We are working on getting our current house ready to put on the market but I am not going to rush as we have the luxury of only having the one mortgage for the new house. Debating whether to list it with a realtor right away or try it on our own for the first few weeks and see if there is any interest at all.

We initially listed ours as For Sale By Owner, based on the rapid FSBO success of some other nearby homes recently, but we had minimal interest. (Mostly attributed to the start of the virus issue.)

After the first 10 days, we switched to the compromise option of listing with a flat fee realtor, basically paying $300 to get a MLS listing, and adding in an agreement to pay 2.7% to the buyer's agent. (Think of it as a fancier, MLS-listed, realtor-friendly version of FSBO; you're still saving a bit at close of sale since you're not having to pay your realtor 3ish percent too.)

And interest seems to have picked up a bit since then. So if you're thinking of doing FSBO, I'd look at starting with that compromise flat fee listing option.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Thank you for the insight amc. That makes me feel better, since our house seems to be "lingering" for a couple weeks longer compared to the pre-quarantine blazing fast market.

You're welcome.
Now might be the time to get out and look if you can or ask your agent to set up virtual showings via zoom or fb live. There is less competition right now but as soon as everyone gets past the wait it out period I think it's going to get very competitive with buyers.

I've already been looking, and have found where I'm going to buy, with a semi-custom home builder in a builder-owned small subdivision. Already prequalified and everything. Just waiting to get our current house under contract before pulling the trigger on the new house.

Good luck!

Here’s a couple of links that may be an interesting read for you...


Hundreds of metro Denver home sellers yank their listings
https://www.denverpost.com/202...enver-home-listings/

Builders Were Scrambling To Fill a Severe Housing Shortage—and Then the Coronavirus Hit. What Now?
https://www.realtor.com/news/t...rs-new-construction/

Here’s a nice site to keep abreast of mortgage rates and news, etc.
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/

I spoke w/ a fella that house for sale ,three blocks away. He said that his realtor is painting a bleak ,even dismal market for a period of 12 weeks. They have moved back relocating too the big city until August and he said that three Realtors have taken up other ,full time jobs.

I wouldn't rely on anyone's predictions right now, including my own.
Complete unknown at this point. Three months we should have a better idea, or not.

We had a bit more success with our second Open House yesterday.

At our first one a few weeks ago, we had one couple show up. They loved it, and actually came back later in the week for a second private showing, and planned to make an offer. However, the husband was furloughed later that week, and they called us to apologize and explain why they weren't going to make an offer.

At our second open house yesterday, we have eight couples show up. (Luckily, they just happened to mostly stagger themselves out by coincidence, so we never had more than four extra people in the house at any one time.)

Our real estate agent said that in this current environment, that's actually a good number of visitors for an open house. And they all seemed to be very serious buyers with lots of specific questions, rather than just bored tire-kickers wanting to get out of the house.

Here's hoping that something comes of it. Today marks 2 weeks on the MLS, and about a month since we first listed it FSBO. Outside of the two open houses, we've had about 5 private showings total in that time period.

(One of which actually ended up buying the house directly across the street from us the next day, which is basically identical, except it was $16k cheaper but needs a new roof... Not sure I understand the logic in that, since our new roof last year cost $19k. Even their real estate agent said he tried to talk them out of it.)

I have a house I need to get sold but I'm waiting a couple weeks or so for the virus to hopefully start settling down and the leaves and shrubs to Spring up.

OP- you might be better off renting your current house for a year rather than trying to sell it. Maybe do a dual listing agreement with your realtor.....sell or lease.....

I wasn't aware dual listing was possible. I might look into that but places around here are still moving and we are closing on a place. Smart or not smart here we go I guess

I work for a new home builder and our sales have slowed down in my community to about zero. The saleslady who typically sells 5 a month hasn't sold a single one this month. A few buyers are thinking about backing out of their deals due to uncertainty with their employment.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
KX90 and Sigfan Roy, I can only suggest that you get the house re-appraised a week before closing. Using the same appraiser, it should be a 30 minute deal for them as they already have the info and just need to pull current comps.

We talked to our agent about this but she said the values are not expected to drop if at all in our area. In fact, she wants to us to consider listing before we close on the new house because they're predicting May will be a mad rush and we may actually get more than we would have other wise.

We are in an area where people from Philly, NYC and NJ move to when they want to escape the cities. Lots of commuters from NYC move down here and/or up around Allentown/Easton PA.

People are still buying houses around here thru virtual tours and/or sight-unseen.

We had been dealing with a builder for over a year now. We got to the point that we were really close to a deal. Went to apply for a loan 3 weeks ago.
Then the stock market caved. The banker told us we would have no problem getting the loan with nothing down.
Well, like the OP, we are now hesitant about the deal. Even if we got the loan and started building, could we sell our house. We would not need to sell it before we moved, but do not want to keep it longer than 4-6 months after we move.

You are the classic motivated seller now, op. Price it right and declutter. Best offers often come early.

Congratulations and Good Luck

Thanks, yeah we are currently having contractors out to fix our current place up a touch and make it ready. We will likely just jump on the first solid offer we get (fingers crossed). I'm keeping an eye on other spots and places are still going pending at a pretty good rate so thats a plus but of course who knows until we are signing papers and handing over the keys.

It’s worth a loss to get out of this area. I’m pretty sure you will come out ahead, unless you are getting a really sweet compound in your new location.