Advice for a Freaked Out Apartment Seller
Help! After many wonderful years living in Brooklyn my husband got a new job and we have to relocate to Seattle. He left me here to sell the apartment and take care of our two young boys thinking we’d have the deal wrapped up and be out there by Christmas. Well, it hasn’t quite turned…
Help! After many wonderful years living in Brooklyn my husband got a new job and we have to relocate to Seattle. He left me here to sell the apartment and take care of our two young boys thinking we’d have the deal wrapped up and be out there by Christmas. Well, it hasn’t quite turned out as we planned.
The broker recommended we price the apartment (a two bedroom walkup on Henry Street in Carroll Gardens) at $595K when it first went on the market almost two months ago. No takers.
After two more price cuts, we’re down to $475K. The open houses are always very busy. But NO ONE IS BUYING. At this point, I’d consider any offers. But there aren’t any. What should I do? The URL for the listing is http://www.bhsbrooklyn.com/detail.asp?id=960620
Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
The stock market and the housing market are not comparable, at least on a historical basis. The stock market has a histtory of volatility, with 5-6 periods where the market declined in the 50% range during the last 80 years. Housing may have done that once (in the great depression). Trading costs on stock are low, making it easy to get in and out. Transaction costs on houses are very high, making them less liquid.
I agree with the idea to flip the dining and living room. When I lived in an identical apt, we painted the dining room (middle room, no windows) a medium color with white woodwork and a modern white light fixture and had bookshelves lining it. It looked quite nice.
There are always people looking to sublet on the bococa parents listserv — I know with 2 kids you are familiar with it. and they’re always “professor and family need to sublet for year” etc. Seem as reliable as anyone.
I think you should do that. Nobody is buying now. It’s just too weird out there. In a year, it may be worse, but it will sell.
Or move on with your life. MOve out and hand keys to an agent. I personally like looking at empty apartments.
I agree with the idea of putting some things into storage. It looks like the dining room is an eating/office space– I’d try to make it just a dining room. Also, even if the apartment is small, a floor plan with dimensions would help. The listing really gives no indication of how large the apartment is, which is always a red flag to me.
This may be more that you want to take on, but if I were to live in this apartment, I’d probably flip the dining and living rooms– the dining room looks bigger and has more light. Finally, when I was going to open houses for top/high floor apartments, sometimes I’d have to walk past three floors of cluttered hallways vestibules (squeezing by boots, jackets, kids toys to get to the next floor). Put yourself if the shoes of a buyer next time you enter your building– that can make a difference. If you neighbors have a lot of things outside their doors, perhaps they can move them in for the open house.
Yeah, but just because “people really want to buy in Brooklyn” doesn’t mean they’re able to. Lending requirements are already much more stringent then they were just a few months ago.
And even if “people really want to buy,” as they watch prices tumble their brains are rethinking the way they think about real estate. Before they thought they had to get in before the market went even higher. In a short time common logic has changed to “wait and see. . . what’s the rush because prices keep going lower?”
The roller coaster ride continues. That’s for sure.
Agreed none of us know what will happen, I do think the economy will be bad for about ten years, and yet I do not think Brooklyn prices will drop substantially more than they already have. I don’t know, could be a pipe dream. But people really want to buy in Brooklyn, crime is down…prices didn’t fall that far in the Bay Area in 1989, dunno. Then again, if this is the beginning of the fall of Rome, then I guess that’s a whole different thing. Although prices are still high in Rome also.
Wasder,
We’re in slightly different boats. First of all, I breath, eat, and sleep real estate investing. My desire to have a Brownstone in Brooklyn is not necessarily as a primary residence, though I would live in it for a while. I can’t overpay because I may want to sell the house for a profit a few years after renovating it.
Of course I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Too many high paying jobs are being lost — the kinds that afforded million dollar plus properties, at the same time as the mortgage crisis is decimating the housing market.
In the long term it won’t matter, so I’m sure when you sell years from now, you’ll do fine. But as a potential short term buyer, I’d rather err on the side of extreme caution and buy something I can easily afford, so if the downturn continues unabated, I can still move to another country, and not worry too much about the Brooklyn Brownstone I’m on the hook to HSBC for.
Ironballs–before you anoint me a brother in arms let me say that my agreement was with the notion that renting would probably not be in the OP’s best interest as it seems inevitable that prices will be lower in a year than they are now. That being said, I don’t quite buy your notion that the market will drop 50% either, or that the drop will be as precipitous as you think it might. Now, I am no expert on finance or real estate pricing for that matter, so I am not going to go out on limb for any predictions. Certainly I hope prices don’t drop 50%. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 30% drops as that would be a larger figure than anything we have seen in the last few down cycles (befitting the nature of the downturn we appear headed for). But really none of us knows what is going to happen and I had enough faith in Brooklyn and in my neighborhood in particular to buy in this climate so by nature I would appear to be a more optimistic sort than you.
That’s what I’m saying, Mopar.
Most Brownstoner regulars are still brainwashed by the housing price run up of the last ten years.
Folks like PHN can’t fathom housing prices going down substantially for superficial, unrelated reasons such as the oft repeated phrase “NYC is different now,” or “crime is lower now,” or “foreigners love NYC now.”
Bottom line: Prices didn’t double because the fundamentals changed. They doubled and tripled because of a system whereby banks lent money to anyone who didn’t have a criminal record. Banks only looked at the latest “comparable sale” to come up with a dollar figure to lend. Lawyers, bankers, brokers, appraisers, buyers, sellers, everybody made money because the market just kept barreling up and up!
Well, it’s not barreling up anymore, and there was no justifiable reason it did in the first place.
So guess what fellow Brownstoners, it’s time to take the ride back down.