We’re in sort of a battle to sell our house. What we think is a reasonably priced updated condo looks like chopped liver to the next buyer. We’ve been on the market for 56 days. I guess that’s not too bad, consider the market. We’ve had three interested buyers, but each one of them seem stuck in the “low-ball” arena–buyers trying to steal our condo from us. We started out at $214,000. I knew from the start that price was too high. We got a few people here and there to come see it. And the first person that put an offer was a girl that lives in this development–rents, but looking to own. We had dropped our price to $209,000 at that point, and she offered $185,000. Um–no. Sorry. Not gonna happen, sista. We counter-offered at $203,000. She didn’t even want to counter back because she said she didn’t want to go over $185,000. Okay, then.
Enter interested person #2: some guy from Houston, TX that never even submitted a contract; instead, he kept playing our unit against another top-level unit listed at $185,000, that was slightly bigger, but had none of the upgrades we had. He ended up going with that unit when he was able to get it for maybe $181,000 and possibly closing help.
And potential buyer #3 that came yesterday: a military woman who acted as if she needed to buy immediately (maybe some VA loan thing). I guess they informally made an offer at $189,000, but said she was negotiable. I haven’t heard anything from our agent, Vanda, about whether they were still planning to put an offer.
Today I was really beginning to feel stressed about this. I thought about how if we were to even consider selling at these offers, then we would walk away with a couple thousand dollars. Are you serious?? Our goal was to walk away with at least $10,000 to have to put on a new house. But does the market call for that right now? Are we too caught up emotionally about damn-near giving our condo away, and not focusing on the fact that simply selling would mean we can move on and get a good deal on a single family home? What’s our goal here?? In this market, I know people who are having to come to the table with boat loads of money, just to “move on.” So, if we can walk away with $3000 or something, are we asking “too much”?
I just don’t know what we should do. Another option, if possible, would be to keep our condo and rent it out, and see how much home we would quality for. It wouldn’t be much, I’m sure. Hmmmmmmmm……..
We’re supposed to go out with our agent tomorrow to check out some homes in Laurel. I was considering not going tomorrow, thinking that if we just wait until we get a contract. But we really do need to keep looking, keep going, keep the momentum going.
Chugging along now…..
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