Before we bought our current house, coming up on five years ago, we looked at another slightly larger house that’s literally just around the corner. It hadn’t officially been listed yet, but our agent (who, weirdly, lives right next door) showed it to us, and we thought very hard about it. Unfortunately, it was about $20K more than the bank was willing to lend us, so we couldn’t make an offer.
We looked at it on a Sunday, and talked to the bank on Monday. By Friday, it had sold, and for $10K more than the original asking price.
It was bought by a young couple, a professional contractor and his wife, and they’ve done a ton of work on the place– new siding, new roof, a bunch of internal work. It looks really nice. They put it on the market again back in late July (at least, that’s when the “For Sale” sign went up).
It’s still on the market.
Now, it might be that they’re asking a completely ridiculous amount of money for it– I don’t know, though it was hard to resist the temptation to go to one of the open houses they’ve had. They’ve changed real estate agents, too (the current sign is from a different agency than the one that went up in July), which might indicate that they’re being unreasonable in some way.
But, really, if you want a clear and dramatic indication of the change in the housing market, this is it. And it’s not just this one house– other houses in the neighborhood have been staying on the market for much longer than they used to (at least based on the half-life for real estate signs sighted on walks with the dog).
It’s probably a Good Thing that we’re happy with our current house…