I know a few neighbors who have refinanced all or part of their original loans and had their places appraised in the last couple months for several thousand more than they paid for them. So not a lot of remorse about “losing equity” among those I know here. Might be a different story among those who bought at the peak, but I don’t know too many who did that.
I knew when I read this that it didn’t scan so I looked into it.
As far as I can tell from the public records, these units first started closing in 08/2006. Maybe there were earlier sales but if so they don’t show up that way in my public records databases. The MLS lists several sales in 2007. Being the curious person I am, I decided to compare the sales from 2006 to the more recent ones in 2007 to see what price movement, if any has occurred in these few short months.
So as to avoid having to listen to any whining about how some units have better locations than others, I used the same or extremely similar models located on the same floor that sold during the different time periods. Here’s what I found:
Unit size date price
314 1097 05/07 $360k
309 1090 09/06 $378k
311 1108 09/06 $386k
Again, about a $20k loss in ~6 months.
I saw other examples that show the same trends, but that would have involved mixing floors so I wanted to filter out that noise up front.
There’s no doubt that an “amazing deal” is in the eye of the beholder, but the only way a recent appraisal could come in higher than an original 2006 sale price is if the appraisal is twisted. As for thinking the grand opening buyers landed a gold mine…LOL.
