With the sub-prime mortgage crisis that bottomed out the American real estate
market this year many people from home sellers to investors have found themselves
getting royally screwed. In fact, it's fairly safe to say that the only
people who have benefited from the mortgage crisis are bankruptcy attorneys.
Southern California is experiencing its lowest home occupancy rate in recent
memory and other, less movie-star enriched locales are suffering even worse.
However, with the worst of the crisis behind us, let's see if we can't
squeeze some sort of decent resolution to your home selling dilemma here in
Chesapeake.
The first thing you will notice when you attempt to sell your home is that
not very many people are looking to buy real estate anymore. This can be kind
of a kick in the pants if you've just been hired by a Toronto executive
recruiting firm and you need to move out of the city post haste. The fact of
the matter is that with the recession and the mortgage crisis combined, people
are very close to keeping all their money in a mattress like they did after
the Great Depression of the 20s and 30s. In order to sell your house, you must
make someone want not just to buy your particular house but a piece of property
in general.
The way to do this is to emphasize the buyer-friendly nature of the post mortgage-crisis
housing market. Low demand for houses has led to lower asking prices, so you'd
better get used to the idea that you probably won't get as much for your
house as you paid when you bought it a few years ago. This is bad for you but
good for the buyer, and like a Burlington lawyer homing in on a personal injury
case, the few buyers who are looking will be drawn to the scent of blood. Play
up just how great a deal they'll be getting with your house, i.e. it's
large and suburban and located in the Deep Creek neighborhood, which they'd
never have been able to afford a year ago.
Alternatively, if it's at all possible for you to remain in Chesapeake
a few more years until the market has recovered, do. Take cash for gold jewelry
to make your mortgage payments if you have to. Because if there's one
thing we know about markets, it's that they go up as well as down, and
analysts are predicting ours will go back up within five years or so.
A third option that is becoming increasingly popular with people who simply
have to move away from their current home is home swapping. Say you're
in need of some Parry Sound accommodation before you can start your new Washington
State job, but you can't buy any until you unload your Chesapeake home,
and no one's biting. You would sign up at a home swap website where you
would hopefully be paired with a Parry Sound resident who's coming down
to work in the dockyards. You could switch homes (exchanging some money if their
relative values didn't match) and everyone would be happy. These are just a few of the options that will keep you from needing to downgrade to a home that's beside a factory that does biosolids application or worse!
|