Monday, January 11, 2010

How to lose money in real estate

12008 Thornbrooke Ct., Bristow, VA 20136

June 12, 2006 purchase price: $619,000
Current list price: $324,900

That's a loss of almost $300,000 in 3½ years!

If the house is in good shape, it may be a good deal.

9 comments:

  1. I've said before, the bumper sticker that I want to see, is that Realtor (tm) symbol and the legeng "lose money now, ask me how." -Jim A

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  2. Hard to believe that this is where we are today!
    Homes have lost their value and I hope that it doesn't stay that way.
    Southwest Wisconsin Real Estate

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  3. Thats so far out that the current price being asked is ridiculously high too. What the hell is out that far other than a walmart, fleamarket and cow farms?

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  4. Agree with Anon 9:39 - if you buy this house you are going to have a crummy commute no matter where you work. Learn to enjoy the morning crawl on I-66, I guess..

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  5. And the place has a walkscore of 12. Which is actually higher than I expected, really.

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  6. New MRIS numbers are out:

    http://www.mris.com/reports/stats/monthly_reti.cfm

    In all of Nova, YOY median prices are up...again. A new all time peak price has been attained in Immunington...

    DEAR GOD!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!MAKE IT STOP!!! WAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

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  7. In all of Nova, YOY median prices are up...again

    Whats that like 6 months in a row up on a YOY basis? Looks like you guys hit a hard bottom.

    Not so here in MD. Over here we have yet to see a single YOY price increase for over 12 months now. Given the trend we may go YOY positive soon, but we certainly arent there yet.

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  8. What a pre-fab piece of junk. I would value it at 70 bucks per square foot (being generous). Another reason why we are not yet to the bottom (= 1999 nominal prices). Watching Realtwhores suffer is fun!

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  9. "the bottom (= 1999 nominal prices). " There are a few problems using 1999 as a fair price bases.
    1. Interest rates where on average about 2% higher. Basically the monthly payments on a $300k loan would have been a lot more in 1999 than it would today.
    2. Inflation, it costs a lot more to build a home today than it did in 1999 especially with the increase in prices of raw matereals.
    3. In 1999, the availability for homes for sale was much scarcer than they are today, (atleast in NoVA).

    When I moved to NoVA in 2000, I did not buy a home because nothing in the areas I wanted to move in had places for sale. A lot of home owners were not willing to sell there homes at the 1999-2001 price level in high demand areas at the current market prices. This is why we ended up having bidding wars and prices started to shoot up. I remmber watching for a place to buy in Crystal City around 2001. I was hoping to find a place for around $100k because that was what the last sale price on many condos where listed at. The problem was, nothing was for sale. It was not until prices started hitting around $300k where people willing to list there homes for sale. Unless the economy keeps going down or you are very lucky I do not think you will find anything neer 1999 prices in popular zip codes.

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