a beauty. Good luck.
Just Listed My House for Sale. Fingers crossed...
- Thread starter Baron
- Start date
a beauty. Good luck.
It was the worst time to buy and then 8mths later it was the best time to buy; crazy huh? It gonna be a new/great adventure good luck.
Keeping the proportions (my apartment doesn't value $3.4M
), it's goo^H^H^H interesting to know that I'm not the only sucker who bought right on top of the market housing bubble of the 2000s. A week after I made the payment at the end of 2007, the state took out the VAT (value added tax, no such thing in the US), instantly lowering the house prices by 15%. Around 2010 the same apartment was selling at nearly half the price I paid for it and it only rebound some two years ago. Now, with the recession in general and in IT in particular, there are very few real estate transactions going on and prices if not dropping at least aren't increasing anymore.Nevertheless, relying on my proven flair, just now I decided to buy a second apartment for what seemed to be some 15-20% above market prices in the area. I've checked the ads, visited a few properties for sale and decided: yup, it's a good idea to pay 20% above market price when everything's frozen and recession looms around the corner.
Besides the apartment from 2007 and possibly the one I'm buying now, I do have a track record of buying at the worst possible moment. Either I'm the perfect sucker who somehow gets lured at the peak or there's an omen or something watching me and when they see me buy, they decide: let's fuck the entire market involved by the transaction. Last time I put a serious amount of money in stocks at the very company I worked for after it sky rocketed for a few years and all inside info from drunken managers was saying sky was the limit ... a few weeks after, the company tanked so hard that not only never recovered but eventually got de-listed from the stock exchange.
Just giving you a heads up, in about a week I'll make the payment for another overpriced apartment so I may single handedly trigger the start of Great Depression #2 (or at least a brutal recession like 2000s or 2007s). @Baron, if you gonna sell, there isn't much time left!
Baron
ET Founder
Just giving you a heads up, in about a week I'll make the payment for another overpriced apartment so I may single handedly trigger the start of Great Depression #2 at least a brutal recession like 2000s or 2007s). @Baron, if you gonna sell, there isn't much time left!
I just got a low-ball offer at $2.9M and I countered at $3.48M. hopefully I can get a few more offers and button this deal up before you single handedly trigger an economic meltdown next week.
It's a very nice looking house and seems competitively priced with similar-sized homes for sale in the neighborhood.I just got a low-ball offer at $2.9M and I countered at $3.48M. hopefully I can get a few more offers and button this deal up before you single handedly trigger an economic meltdown next week.
One thing I found a little unusual is a little over a year after the sale the house was listed for sale, and then for the next ~5.5 years, it was listed ~55% of the time.
I guess the rich and famous just do things differently.
Baron
ET Founder
It's a very nice looking house and seems competitively priced with similar-sized homes for sale in the neighborhood.
View attachment 338548
One thing I found a little unusual is a little over a year after the sale the house was listed for sale, and then for the next ~5.5 years, it was listed ~55% of the time.
View attachment 338549
I guess the rich and famous just do things differently.
I went through a divorce in 2007 - 2008 and the final judgement stated that the house needed to be sold and we would split the gain or the loss. That's why it was listed from from 2008 to 2013. The problem was that the market was tanking so fast that I couldn't sell it without taking a significant loss and my ex had no money to contribute to the loss. At one point, the house was upside down over $1Million, so she would have needed to bring $500k to the table just to sell it. So the listing was pulled down until the market came back to the point that we could realistically sell the house without taking a bloodbath.
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Status update: I've bought my second apartment. Well, "bought" is a figure of speech, paid 25% of it's value from my own pocket and borrowed the rest from the bank as a 15 years mortgage. Given my salaried income, if I'd be parsimonious, I'd actually pay it in two years. Since I'm not parsimonious, I'll pay it in three.
So now I got two apartments close to each other, some 2 minutes from each other door to door. I actually could have bought the second one in the same block of flats, just below the one I already own. But no way I wanted to do that, too little separation of work from home. I'm using one of them as "my office" since I work from home and having "the office" door-in-door with my home wouldn't be a good idea. Not because of separation of work from leisure but because separation of work from wife
Like with two buildings to traverse between the apartments and climb the stairs to second floor, those two minutes it takes to do that are enough to discourage my wife from impromptu visits. Also I can claim that "I have to work late and I'll spend the night 'in the office' - hence sleep in my old apartment" while in reality I'm getting a sixpack of beers and sometimes, if that's not enough, call a taxi after my wife and kid are asleep and head to the city. There's a few bars and clubs that won't let me in anymore (usually I win this conundrum by simply waiting for the personnel to change - eventually all get replaced and the new ones don't remember me
but the city is big enough that the other clubs and bars don't know and don't care who they are dealing with ). Then around 2-3-5 AM I'm heading back and in the morning I'm in my office, looking worn out from a night of hard work just like I said I will
So now I got two apartments close to each other, some 2 minutes from each other door to door. I actually could have bought the second one in the same block of flats, just below the one I already own. But no way I wanted to do that, too little separation of work from home. I'm using one of them as "my office" since I work from home and having "the office" door-in-door with my home wouldn't be a good idea. Not because of separation of work from leisure but because separation of work from wife
Like with two buildings to traverse between the apartments and climb the stairs to second floor, those two minutes it takes to do that are enough to discourage my wife from impromptu visits. Also I can claim that "I have to work late and I'll spend the night 'in the office' - hence sleep in my old apartment" while in reality I'm getting a sixpack of beers and sometimes, if that's not enough, call a taxi after my wife and kid are asleep and head to the city. There's a few bars and clubs that won't let me in anymore (usually I win this conundrum by simply waiting for the personnel to change - eventually all get replaced and the new ones don't remember me
but the city is big enough that the other clubs and bars don't know and don't care who they are dealing with ). Then around 2-3-5 AM I'm heading back and in the morning I'm in my office, looking worn out from a night of hard work just like I said I will Like I said in my previous post, I don't live in the city but rather in an adjacent village. There are cities in the country that don't have the population of this 'village' (largest in the country). So it's not a city, it's not a town, it's a village. And fighting tooth and nail to remain so, for tax purposes and not just that. Last year my taxes were precisely 0.0375% of my property value. In Hungary this won't happen, a 'village' near Budapest pays Budapest taxes but not in Romania. A village near a major city pays the same taxes as a disadvantaged hamlet in the mountains with no water roads and fickly electricity.
Besides that, EU funds. One can access EU grants for villages, which are unavailable 10Km further away, in the city. A work colleague got a €50,000 grant to start a toy factory because it helps 'rural development', right?
And last but not least, 50 meters from my apartments there's a vacant land flanked by blocks of flats, which a birdie (friend of mine who builds blocks of flats) whispered to me that has been approved for a high school. Not "there might be a project for a school / mall / park / lake / whatever" so buy here because location. Design done, project approved, money allocated (part from the state, part from EU). So, by the speed these things move here, my kid who's now in primary school maybe will be able to do high school 3 minutes from home rather than 3 hours commute both ways to the city. And prices of the apartments around cannot but increase in the long run
Besides that, EU funds. One can access EU grants for villages, which are unavailable 10Km further away, in the city. A work colleague got a €50,000 grant to start a toy factory because it helps 'rural development', right?
And last but not least, 50 meters from my apartments there's a vacant land flanked by blocks of flats, which a birdie (friend of mine who builds blocks of flats) whispered to me that has been approved for a high school. Not "there might be a project for a school / mall / park / lake / whatever" so buy here because location. Design done, project approved, money allocated (part from the state, part from EU). So, by the speed these things move here, my kid who's now in primary school maybe will be able to do high school 3 minutes from home rather than 3 hours commute both ways to the city. And prices of the apartments around cannot but increase in the long run
Baron
ET Founder
Wow. That's pretty low. In Florida, property taxes are about 1%.
Yes, I always wondered why taxes are so high in the US. But looking a bit around they rather seem to be unusually low here so I'm starting to think this might not last. Also based on how much I paid it seems the state undervalues the value of my property. Which I suppose is the correct thing to do, real property prices tend to vary (i.e. raise) a lot faster than they are recognized in official books.