From USA Today: Desperation Sets In While Homes Sit For Months With No Offers
From CNN: Home Prices Post Record Decline
From The Atlantic: After An Ugly 2010, The Housing Market Won't Look Much Better In 2011
Selling my house was objectively not very prudent. I tried to tell myself that buying at the bottom of the market made everything even out. I can still make that argument, but I spent a frightening amount of stressful time in 2011 holding my breath.
Action does not always need to be prudent - or inaction for that matter.
I also told myself that as a small community, the area I was living in would be largely immune from the big-city and suburban housing market sickness. Since I was so deeply involved in the buying and selling process, I started keeping track of the market in my township. The chart below shows how much of a glut there really was even in that small community five years ago - and what a bad financial decision moving might have been.
With the market overloaded, and with many of them foreclosures, prices were seriously depressed. If there was a bright spot, it was that as a house with improvements made under the assumption I would never move again, the house showed well compared to some of the foreclosures in the area. Still, foreclosures in the area now are about 10% of what they were five years ago.
As expected, the harsh edges of real estate have softened over the last five years, but I still vividly recall the two lowest of the low points.
Taking care of two houses was very painful, and it seemed after every showing someone would leave a window or door unlocked. On one afternoon with a threat of rain, I went to the house to check on it and mow the lawn. I was done with the front yard as the smell of ozone preceeded a thunderstorm. While trying to finish the back yard, the skies opened up with a deluge of water. I only had a relatively small section in the back of the back yard to finish so I kept at it. Then the lawn mower quit. Kaput. The unmowed square got relatively more expansive as I had to finish cutting the now sodden lawn with the push mower while light rain continued to linger. I drove home wet, cold and defeated.
At one point, there were three realistic potential buyers showing interest. Things were looking up as I was convinced one of these would work out, one of them had to. Inability to buy during a divorce and inability to get financing in the new reality of lending forced two of the three out. I was eating Terra Mediterranean Vegetable Chips when the Realtor called to say the third would not be buying the house due to family squabbles. "So we're back to square one," was all I could say after a long pause.
It is hard to find anything "good" about the selling process. But in retrospect, it does sometimes help to bring some perspective to difficult situations, and perspective is needed all too often.
This too shall pass.
And it did.
Eventually the house was under contract. I'm pretty sure that once that happens, the buying and selling process is designed to extract as much money out of the sale as possible. I'm also pretty sure that once under contract, the real estate professionals push things through as hard as possible, while the finance and government bodies do everything possible to stop the sale. Both buyer and seller are merely along for the ride at that point. I'm 100% sure that I'm fine with how everything worked out.
The actual closing was suprisingly anticlimactic, it was dark outside once the closing was finished. I went to the bank to deposit the closing settlement and the teller had to get it approved since it was such a large deposit. I ate Kroger sushi (always disappointing) and grilled steak that night. The sale was an amazing gift.
I have one picture of the house from around the time I bought it that helps me remember how great it was to move there. Whether it is nostalgia or rose-colored glasses really doesn't matter. I even miss aspects of the house - I miss living in an old victorian sometimes; I miss living in what might be considered a commmunity, albeit somewhat less frequently. I have surprisingly few later pictures of the house. That may not be an accident.
It no longer feels odd to drive by it. I barely even wince when I see the basement light has been left on. Someone else has lived there now for 1/3 as long as I had. Allowing things to come to an end peacefully is a gift of getting older.
The sale of the old house was really the conclusion of the purchase of the new house one year previous. Five years after that finality, I can say without hesitation that while not objectively prudent at the time, it remains one of the better decisions I've ever made ... even in a really bad housing market.
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