Should I Think About Selling?

Like many answers, this one is conditioned upon your reason for selling.

Career and/or location change. This is the group I most often see that absolutely has to sell their home. A great new opportunity out of state, the desire to be closer to family, or retirement to a warmer climate are the most common reasons.

While you can try to rent or lease the existing home, it is very difficult to be a 'long distance' landlord. Many consumers that don't have enough equity to make the sale at least a break even proposition are hiring property management firms to handle tenant screening, rent collection and property maintenance. Their reasoning is often that they are waiting for the market value to go up, but most Real Estate industry and national economic experts are predicting a 5+ year wait for that to happen.

Move-Up Homeowners. This group needs a larger home and may or may not have a lot of equity in their existing home. The family has grown and they need more space. Why not take advantage of buying a bigger house while prices are down? Often that is a good plan, but it depends on their ability to bring money to the table when the current home is sold in many cases. Often there's not enough left to make an appropriate down payment on the new house.

This group also thinks about leasing or renting their existing home, and that sometimes works, but remember to plan for at least a one month vacancy period when the lease is up. You will also need reserves in case a furnace or water heater goes out, or for other small repairs. While the rental market seems to be pretty good right now, it's still all about the money. It's easier to rent an $900/month house than a $1800/month house.

Discretionary Move. This group doesn't have a particularly strong motive to move. Perhaps it's a longer than desired commute to work or they want a change in setting for no particular reason. The days of selling (at a profit, of course) are pretty much gone at this point in time. If you purchased before 2002, you may be OK, especially if you purchased with a 20% down mortgage program.

Everybody's situation is different, and I am happy to go over the benefits and pitfalls of selling with you and to provide you with an approximation of your selling costs without further obligation.