I think I can safely make the following statement: buying a home is much easier than selling a home today.
Just the other day, my next door neighbor of 20 years put up a for sale sign—that’s right, you can live next door to Mr. Media!—followed the next day by a smaller tag below it that reads “Certified Distressed Property Broker.” Certified by whom, I wondered, but that’s beside the point.
On the other side of our house is George and Lynn’s old house. They bought at the height of the market, then moved to West Virginia two years later for better job opportunities, putting their place on the market. Number of takers? None. They finally found a renter to pay a fraction of their monthly mortgage. George and Lynn, who were wonderful neighbors, are also paying four times the taxes we are because of the high price they paid to buy.
Oh, and if that isn’t enough to make the blood boil, the county property appraiser values their home at slightly more than half what they paid for it.
But wait, there’s more: across the street from us, the mother and daughter whose family owned that cottage since it was built in the 1950s, sold at a fire sale price a year ago, again because of better job opportunities. The young couple that bought it ripped out the guts, re-imagined the residence and have made quite a lovely home of it, no doubt dramatically improving the value of their investment.
All of which is to say that Nancy Gentile and I should have a pretty lively conversation. She’s the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Selling a Home. If anyone can offer good, simple advice on how to do it, it’s got to be her.
Nancy Gentile Website
NANCY GENTILE podcast excerpt: “Price your home strategically. Right now the real estate market is flooded with over-priced homes. It is critically to set yours apart from the rest. Buyers do not typically make offers on homes that are priced too high.”
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