Our house has not sold yet....

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-19-2004
Our house has not sold yet....
11
Thu, 05-11-2006 - 12:28pm

and I'm getting a little nervous. It's been on the market since the beginning of March.
We only had a handful of people look at it. Although our house won't be finished for months, I'm so scared of having to pay 2 mortgages! I plan on paying off current mortgage, suv loan and my student loan with the profit.

The darn interest rates are up, so that can't be helping matters. The contract on our new house isn't even signed yet because the property deed is being transfered (lawyer has it)~~ so the interest rates will probably be even higher for us when we get our loan.

We are going to stay at my parents if our house does sell before the new one is done, which will save us lots of money for all the "crap" we will need. (okay, want.)

I followed some suggestions you all gave me for my down payment and sold my old dining room set, a kitchen hutch, Barbie jeep, lawn mower bagger and truck hitch ($200+ total.)I also have a nice wooden full bunk bed that should go for $200. I'm getting there....

Thanks for letting me vent, Nicki

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 05-11-2006 - 1:03pm

Are you using a real estate agent for the sale? If you are ask the agent what the average "days on the market" is for your area to get a better idea of how long it usually takes for a house to sell. Have you had an open house yet? If not, ask your agent about maybe having one of those too.

Heather

Avatar for cl_beckymk
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 05-11-2006 - 1:49pm
Hugs!
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Thu, 05-11-2006 - 5:06pm

We had attempted to sell our house a few years back. We didn't succeed because there was talk of building a new bypass highway to form a connector between two North Georgia Interstates, and it would have run smack-dab through our neighborhood, taking out our home. LOL! Kinda hard to sell a house that was possibly going to be demolished. LOL!

Our realtor gave us some tips that we got some great feedback on, though. She told us to pack things away if we're not going to need them in the next few months (Holiday decorations, Turkey Pan, Small Appliances in cupboards, etc, and all of our out-of-season clothing, etc. Basically, just leave the essentials in our closets and cupboards. Everything else was to be packed away and taken out of the house (to storage, to a friend or family member's basement, etc). Then, take every room and 'stage' it each day. For example, rather than making my bed like normal, I'd make it, and then turn the blankets down on one side as if it were waiting for someone to climb into it, and then I put a little wooden bed table on the bed and put some crossword puzzle books and things on it to make it look more inviting. If I knew there was going to be a showing, I'd light candles in the bathrooms and on our fireplace mantle and dining room table. The dining room table was always set. We ate our meals at our breakfast room table instead, and kept the dining room table set with placemats, cloth napkins, wine glasses, etc. If we knew a showing was coming, we'd put soft music playing, usually classical (just something low on the FM radio dial will do usually). Also, to encourage agents to leave their cards in the house, I put a small table just inside the front door with a little piece of paper (folded like a place marker) saying, "Agents: Please leave card", along with some fliers about the house and two bowls of candy (each a different type). My husband had thought the candy bowls were a bit 'overkill' for the sale of a house, but you'd be surprised how many agents left feedback that said, "Nice house, Showed well, not sure about vaulted ceilings--LOVED THE CANDY! Thanks!" LOL! Or "Candy was a nice touch...we hadn't had time to stop for lunch!"

Now, granted, this only works with the showings that you know about. It won't help when you have a knock at the door at 6:30am, and you stagger to the door just to find a realtor and potential buyers waiting to see your home. OR...when realtors don't call first and use the lockbox to open the door, and just start showing the house....and walk in on you in the shower! (Yes, this actually happened to me...).

Wishing you lots of luck in getting your house sold fast! The market might pick up, even with the higher interest rates, once school is out. Most families with children who are planning a big move will do it during the summer break, I would think.

Pat :-D

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-12-2004
Fri, 05-12-2006 - 12:40am
Hi, Nikki--Pat had some good suggestions. I thought I would share some of the things we did when we had to get the house reappraised, to get the maximum benefit of what our house would be worth. Remember, it needs a lot of work---paint, fixing bathroom walls, landscape, etc. l) We touched up the paint in the kitchen. We'd love to get a new kitchen (think retro green 1970's look) but we made do. The person that came over told us to put scents in the rooms (vanilla, cinammon candles, room spray, etc.) and put fresh flowers on the table in the kitchen. 2) To cover up the cat claw damage, we got "throws" for the couches and runners for the rug areas.. 3)The kitchen, bathroom, and landscape are what makes a house inviting, he said. So, we planted some flowers on the front porch, had the trees trimmed, replaced bathroom fixtures (DH is still doing this), and got rid of the ants (sort of). Truly, if you could have seen me windexing and spraying, you would have thought I was at a Turkish incense room. It DID pay off, and house was reappraised for a lot more than we thought! Hugs. Whiz.
Avatar for colomom99
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Fri, 05-12-2006 - 11:57am

Just wanted to say ours isn't selling either!

Of course we've only been on the market for about two weeks but usually houses fly in our neighborhood. Right now though it is deaddeaddead. I stage it every single morning, we lowered the price already (I always thought it was waaaay overpriced) and have had a handful of showings but they are mostly real estate agent previews which are starting to bug me. Their feedback is always the most snarky. We live in an 1890s Victorian cottage about 2600 square feet. We gutted most of the interior that had been "modernized" over the years, brought it back to original style (high ceilings, crown moldings, wide baseboards, french doors, gingerbread trim on the exterior) PLUS we added a large family room with 20-foot ceilings and put in grantie countertops, stainless steel new appliances in the kitchen, and on and on. The feedback we're getting is the rooms are small, the kitchen isn't "state of the art" and there is no master suite. Well, duh. It's 110 years old in the city. There ARE a few homes with totally new 20 x 20 kitchens and walk in closets in our neighborhood -- complete scrap offs that have been rebuilt and are now selling for over a milion bucks!!!! Ours is about half that. I say if that's what you want get out your checkbook and knock yourself out...

It really irks me because it's pretty clear that our house is what it is -- drop dead charming but not a suburban McMansion. Why are real estate agents of all people complaining??

Sorry just venting and frustrated because I can't make any plans for summer or next school year. I hate limbo.

Jenny

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2005
Fri, 05-12-2006 - 5:14pm

Nicki, I hope the timing of the purchase and sale of your two homes works out for you!!!!

 

Image hosting by TinyPic

Avatar for endomagazine
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-09-2004
Fri, 05-12-2006 - 10:08pm

Hello,


I hope your house sells soon! I receive

Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke

Geeks on Tap: Mission Accomplished

Avatar for mquin73
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Sat, 05-13-2006 - 1:30am

I totally know how you feel Nicki. Our old house is on the market (we had rented it for a year after moving) and it's been that way since September 05. Thankfully we don't have 2 mortgages, as my dh is military and we live in post housing, but it's killing us having to make that mortgage payment still. In fact all of it had been going towards our debt cuz we had no other way to pay it, until my dh re-enlisted and got a nice sized bonus so we were able to pay alot of debt off and now we have payed the last 2 months mortgage out of our tax refund and bonus money, but we can't do this much longer. It is very frustrating. We've lowered the price on the house 3 times now. We had one offer on the house but they wanted us to pay their closing costs and we would have had to shell out $4000 to sell it, of which we did not have the money at that time. If we would have I think it would have been better just to get rid of it, considering we have payed almost $9000 in payments just since it's been on the market.

I really don't know if it's the way the market is going or if it's the realtor. Unfortunately, we are 700 miles away so can't really keep an eye on it ourselves. I just keep hoping and praying every month that it sells.

I wish you lots of luck and hope your house sells really soon and you don't have to deal with what we are dealing with right now.

Michelle


signature 2008

Avatar for mrslove2000
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sat, 05-13-2006 - 12:49pm

I know how you are feeling Nicki. We put our house on the market in February knowing that we would be moving due to DH's job transfer in April. Here it is mid May and both April and May we've paid double house payments. UGG It's frustrating to think I would have ALLl of our unsecured debt paid off if the house had sold sooner. I am thinking we may need to change realtors. (ours is not being very responsive). He assured us it would sell fast once we had moved out (that was 4 weeks ago and we have heard from him only once)

Best of luck to ya'll.
Susan

<ahref="http://www.TickerFactory.com/debt/wJLmWvM/"><imgborder="0"src="http://tickers.TickerFactory.com/ezt/t/wJLmWvM/debt.png"></a>

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-19-2004
Mon, 05-15-2006 - 2:28pm

I wish you all the best also in selling your homes. Susan, I don't know how you pull off 2 mortgages!

I like our agents, they know the area well and are with a top selling agency here. Their website gives great details and pictures of the homes which many others don't. We haven't had an open house, but if it doesn't sell by mid summer~ we'll tell them we want one. Our other house should be done in Sept-Oct. It seems like the market is just slowing down...bigtime. Nicki

Pages