Is it a Good Time to Sell My Home?
I do a lot of online home market evaluations for people all over the Albuquerque Metro Area. Some of these folks I know and others I have never met. Many folks who follow the news have an idea that their home may not be worth what they thought it once was. Others seem to be genuinely shocked and some seem to want to “kill the messenger”. (All I do is interpret the data folks.)
Some people can afford to sell because at least here in ABQ, we haven’t dipped much below 2006 home values, so if a homeowner purchased before then and didn’t put a second mortgage on the home during the run-up, or refinanced and took significant cash out, we can normally get them clear after all the closing costs.
What it comes down to is your reason for selling. If you have to sell because you are moving or you want to sell to buy a bigger home, (see my post http://wp.me/p1ByQA-B for good reasons to buy) selling now is unavoidable. If you can wait maybe that is a good idea, but nobody really knows how long it’ll be before housing prices start back up or how long it will be before your house reaches a price range acceptable to you. Personally, I think we are about 50% of the way through the foreclosure bubble here in ABQ. With housing prices for non-distressed homes just starting to be affected by foreclosures and short sales we could still see maybe a 5% drop and that assumes an economic recovery this year. Say maybe a year of plateauing before things start back up and you are looking at another 24 months at the levels we are at now. Then you have to look at how long to will take to get back to early 2007 levels and all told it could be ten years before you could feel good about selling. Do you have ten years to wait? Then don’t sell now. And for goodness sakes if you are behind with mortgage payments and really don’t have any hope of renegotiating your mortgage, don’t suffer foreclosure. A good short sale specialist can advise you on how to avoid foreclosure and at least save your credit (see my post http://wp.me/p1ByQA-1k ).
Don’t think there aren’t buyers out there. There are buyers in every price range. Your home just needs to be the “prom queen” in its price range. There were 7615 buyers out there last year. Yes 1/3 of them bought distressed properties, but 5085 bought non-distressed properties.
The bottom line is this, if you can’t or don’t want to wait, you don’t have to, but the truth is nobody knows when this market will come back, but almost nobody thinks it’ll be very soon.
