Comments on: Neighbors Selling Their Homes

By: plonkee

plonkee — Tue, 29 May 2007 20:06:45 +0000

Yes I think you are justifying the price that you paid for your house. You wouldn’t be normal otherwise.

Eventually, your house is likely to go up in value, even if you did buy at the worst possible time. And there’s still the possibility that you will eventually sell at one of the best possible times.

If it helps any, over here, an extra bedroom would probably add £15K onto a house price (approx $29K). So looks like you could be quids in.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:36:24 +0000

You most likely won’t get the full $7k that you spent upgrading windows, but you should get some return on them when you sell. Your house is likely much more energy efficient too, so you should have lower utility costs in the mean time.

By: cami

cami — Sat, 26 May 2007 13:24:06 +0000

One thing to consider is property taxes. I don’t know that much about how they assess values, but if you bought the 292K house and put in 7k windows yourself, wouldn’t you only be paying properties taxes on the 292k (for a least the first few years anyway). Plus 292 + 7 = 299K so it’s still cheaper than all the other houses you mentioned, except yours.

By: Posco

Posco — Fri, 25 May 2007 23:09:36 +0000

Exactly, I was just going to say the same thing as Chris. The bank knows it’s going to be “earning” interest on whatever that owner pulls out of the house equity.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:28:13 +0000

His house may have been appraised for $339k, but thats probably not be what he can actually get. When you say he refinanced, I assume you mean he pull cash out of his equity. The bank gave him a loan, they didn’t buy his house.