Bugs – I think you wanted to direct that to Rustico not me but I agree that distance is probably most significant (sorry Rustico). Understand that its just my opinion, I am not a sage! In fact I have very mixed feelings.
Also LateSummer2008 thanks for the clarification – I will take it under advisement.
Rustico (and all) check this out! Just got a somewhat proof that my getting out of dodge was a good move. I’ve written before that my house in the north county (2 acres – 4800ish feet) was sold in Dec 2006. By then the market was dead (according to the local realtor and I believe them). I didn’t even know how bad things were in the fall of 2006 (only 6 months ago or so) but they were dead. Notice you never really heard anything about that in the media.
Anyway I put my house up at a very excellent price (what I thought) 2,100,000 – 2,300,000. I sold it for 2,050,000 and many people thought I was crazy – I should have held out for more. Anyway, while the breaking even (roughly) as I bought for 2M was ok with me, I wasn’t prepared to keep doing the long distance drive to La Jolla for my child’s school.
There is now a house on the market same as mine but with a sports court and pool house (I didn’t have either) and a not as good view. What pisses me off (not for them – I hope they can sell they are awesome people) – is that the house has been on the market for 6 months and it keeps coming up as new on market (3 times). The MLS lets you change the ‘days on market’ which is complete crap. Now it is 2 days on market which isn’t true (maybe they changed brokers but I don’t think so and shouldnt matter). This is fraud. A home purchase is your most important decision and the data availible in the market is crap.
Anyway the houses are not custom, they are top level production (read: tract homes!) – but they actually were very, very nice. The quality of the finishes, etc. were very good (comparatively to lets say Carmel valley houses which are crap).
So anyway (too much coffee) This house started at 2.3-2.5M, then to 2.1-2.3M, now its at 1.9M-2.2M. Wow. If an offer comes in at 1.8+ they will probably take it (I don’t know for a fact but I’m sure that in today’s market they wouldn’t have a value range if they weren’t expecting to get the bottom of it.
What is freaking me out is that I called this market in our neighborhood. I thought that the 2.05M was a fair but low price. The price my neighbors got 1 year before was 2,550,000 ( 15% bigger and better view), I had competition because the exact house as mine (with a better yard, less view) was priced 200K more than mine and had gone on the market 3 months before ours. They finally sold 3 months after us for 2,100,000. To think that the other house currently on the market might sell for 1.9M or so means that prices are falling very, very fast. There are NO serious buyers our there. We had 3 showings in 10 weeks – which is amazingly bad considering how well priced the house was. Now this might not be indicitive of all markets, from my perspective getting out at any reasonable price was worth it.
So….
2005 (late) 2.50M
2006 (late) 2.05M
2007 (early) 2.10M
2007 (????) 1.9M-2.2M value range on market over 6 months and what will it finally sell for?
