The Housing Market Changed

First off, getting back into blogging is HARD. I have lost the discipline of setting aside specific time to write on a weekly basis, and now I am struggling not just with what to say, but finding the time to actually say it.

We currently have our house on the market. We live in the Seattle area, where, up until May, houses went on the market on Wednesday. They had open houses that weekend and offer review dates on Tuesday. They were under contract by end of day Wednesday, maybe Thursday if the bidding war was intense. And just about every house had some kind of bidding war. Most houses were selling for at least $10k over list price. It was pretty common to see them going for $50-75k over list price, and some houses were regularly selling for $100-200k over list price. It was ridiculous.

This apparently started to slow down in June, though no one quite realized it. My house went on the market on July 5. Given my house, my neighborhood, the price we set, I fully expected my house to be under contract in less than a week. And that was not an outrageous expectation, given what the market had been like.

We are now mid-way into September. My house is still on the market. Not only have we not gotten a bidding war, we have not even gotten a single offer, not even below list price. And it just makes no real sense to me.

Intellectually, I know Seattle is doing a reset to a “normal” real estate market, from the ridiculous one it has been. I also know that the fact that I am looking at selling my house for $150k more than I paid for it 3 years ago is NOT something to be complaining about. But the last two years have NOT been a normal market for Seattle. Truth is, it was starting when we bought this house three years ago. And I am now having to re-wrap my head around what this means.

We are actually very blessed in that we have friends who are letting C, myself, and the dogs stay with them while the house is on the market, because keeping the house clean, or managing showings with two dogs, is not the best use of our time and energy.

So currently, we are house hunting, but kind of half-heartedly. It was not half-hearted at the start, when I thought my house would sell quickly, but now… And, we do not want to make a contingent offer. We want to wait until we have an offer in hand before making one of our own.

The only good thing about this is that our number one choice, a house we saw a week before our house went on the market, is also still on the market. (Wait, let me check that. Being that I am now in a half-hearted mood, I have not checked the listings in a few days. Yes, still on the market.) In fact, it has had it’s price lowered by $20k.

Of the four houses we have seen that have been our absolute favorites, only one of them has sold, and that was also one that went on the market before ours did. So currently, there are three houses that we really like that are priced well below the top end of our price range, that we would happily buy. Which is good, especially since we may end up lowering the price on our house one more time, to bring it down to a new search parameter.

And we keep looking, even if a little half-heartedly, so that when our house does get an offer, we are then able to put in an offer right after that. Because while our friends are gracious, and have not put a time limit on how long we can stay with them, we do not want to abuse that. That, and I really want my own house/space again.