me and the housing crisis |

me and the housing crisis

September 23rd, 2008 | by geo |

The meltdown of the U.S. financial markets was jump started by several factors. The housing bubble, American consumers overspending, trade deficit and on the story goes…

I put my 4 year old house on the market this summer and was able to experience the housing bubble burst with my own eyes. We listed the house on the market in June, which was the worst possible time to list a house. In my neighborhood alone there were 18 homes on the market!! From June on the market spiraled down, foreclosures in our area spiked, and not a single house was moving. People were forced to drop prices to ridiculous lows (10-20% and more…) just to compete. Just to be able to dump their houses! And this was in a so called “stable market,” Columbus, Ohio, where home values have been relatively constant during both the boom and sluggish times. I cannot imagine selling a house in NY, Florida, or California during this time. Owners are losing over 50% of the value!

I decided to lease my house vs. selling and taking the hit. Actually it was more the fact that I believed I wouldn’t be able to sell vs. anything else. Thanks to Craigslist, and 99% of pure luck and serendipity I was able to find the PERFECT tenants for my house and duck out of this crisis at least for the next year. It took some time and I received several calls but many of them were just “not a fit,” and I didn’t trust leasing to them after the horror stories I’ve heard about bad tenants.

So, thank you to Warren P for finding me a the right time and also being the perfect tenants we were looking for. (Warren BTW is in the same position as me, and has leased his house too ) I only hope that the market turns around after the election and people are at least able to sell their homes next year. I believe it will take longer, at least 18-24months before it fully stabilizes. We’ll see if I can hang on that long……..