While we weren’t planning on starting to sell our house until much later, the sale of a couple properties near our home piqued our interest. The home across the street sold for significantly more than we had believed our our was worth at the time and we had spent significant money upgrading our bathrooms, installing solar and putting a pool in, among many other upgrades.
I’m sure most folks in the World have probably heard how notoriously expensive Bay Area Real Estate is and how competitive it is to buy a house. We’ve been very fortunate. When we purchased our first home in 2005, we paid way more money than I ever thought we’d pay for a home…and it was a VERY modest home. Suffice it to say, that even with the Pandemic and the 2008 housing crisis, that home (which we still own) is significantly higher than what we paid.
Homes pretty much sell themselves here….at least they used to. As such, we teased the idea of selling our home by ourselves and avoiding the sum 4.5%-6% Real Estate commissions. But, we ultimately decided not to.
In March, the market was hot. We listed the home as “COMING SOON” but as a started to prepare for my trip from St. Augustine to Norfolk, VA, I began to get worried. We had the continued lockdowns in China, the Ukraine crisis and now crazy high inflation. We needed to get it on the market FAST!
After some 48 days or so, we finally got an offer on August 2! However, it was way below what we were hoping for and it was with contingencies, something relatively unheard of in the Bay Area.
After a couple of counters, the Buyers put their final offer in and Sherine and I needed to make a decision. Selling a home can often be an emotional experience. When the market is in decline, comparing our home value to others that were sold weeks and months earlier is a challenge, to say the least. Trying to convince Sherine that while she may be right in thinking our home is worth more than what was being offered, that doesn’t mean there’s buyers ready, or able, to spend the money we think it’s worth.
We can’t complain although sometimes we all do. God willing, the house sale will go through but we have a little less than 3 weeks to go to see if the Buyer’s house will close. Assuming it does, we’ll walk away and would have done alright. It’s good to not make home buying/selling personal, in my opinion and in times of a market decline, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Exciting times await!