S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

So after reading the Home Values post I got to thinking...

If you bought your home before the home values plummeted, what are your future plans for your home especially if you bought your "starter" home not a forever home?

Do you think you will
A - stay put until you can make back your money, put as little as possible into current home
B - stay put and make the home what you want it to be for a forever home, ie an extension, pool etc
C- eventually just sell for some loss in order to get what you want
D - Other

This question obviously mostly applies to those who are not currently living in their foever home and bought prior to 2007

I know I could have done a poll but wanted to encourage further discussion...

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We will sell low but also buy low. Our house is about the same value it was when DH bought it. We might break even. Sad but we will also be able to buy houses we could never buy before.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We bought in 2006, but we bought our "forever home".

So, we plan to live here for years and years and we are not too worried about what happens with the market unless our neighborhood goes to pot and then who knows (hopefully that won't happen).


We have some projects to do and we'll do them as we always planned.

I will say I've heard people who sell at a loss comment that they are "just transferring the loss" to the new home.

If we were thinking of moving, I think this is how I would think about it. I wouldn't want to feel trapped in my home and if it meant taking a hit, getting out and getting into something I want, I might go for it. As long as it was a good deal on what we wanted.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We did not buy our forever home. We bought our 10 year home. We are in it for 8.5 years. We have equity in it. We bought in 2002.

We would like to move but maybe out of state. Then our "profit" would have a bigger impact. It may make lower wages easier to deal with.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We are fixing up our house right now to rent out

That way we still have it to sell a few years down the road and can make a little extra money while doing so

And we can get a much better house for our money as well!

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We bought in 2004. Not a starter home but we knew we wouldn't be here forever.

We're in the process of moving now. We sold for $20K more than we bought it for, but we put a lot of money into renovations and we won't get all that back. But its a great time for us to buy - low interest rates, we have a good amount of equity in the house and since we're upgrading we're making up for any money lost on our house on the house we're buying.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We bought a "starter" home in 2005. It was a major fixer upper and we thought we were being smart about it. We sunk a lot of money into repairs. The crash has killed us!

Our house, despite a new kitchen, bath, deck, fence, finished basement, new roof and siding and lots of other upgrades is worth less than we bought it for. If we sold today we'd be lucky to break even after paying a Realtor.

We could do construction to make the house bigger or move. Either way we need to save up cash because we have such little equity in the house. For now, we have decided not to put another penny into the house and save everything we can towards a down payment on something larger. It is very disappointing because we thought buy putting our money into repairs we were building equity that we could use to "trade up". The upside is if we can save fast enough we will be buying cheaper and hopefully still get a good interest rate.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

B - stay put and make the home what you want it to be for a forever home, ie an extension, pool etc


Although this is not our forever home, we are planning on doing a lot of renovations. This home was completed under done for the neighborhood. This was billed as a 3 bedroom home but it was NOT at all. We are planning on incorporated the screened in porch into the kitchen and opening up the space completely and also redoing the whole second floor. My DH is in construction, so we know how much something like this would cost, but without doing these changes this house will NEVER resell. This is a family neighborhood, and you could not raise a family here. So...we will be here indefinitely OR we will move at some point. But in any case there will be LOTS of work to do.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

we bought in 2005 and decided to sell and get a bigger house with a lower interest rate. We are taking a HUGE loss (over six figures), but the house we are buying is significantly less than it was in 2005 and a much nicer house in a nicer neighborhood. We'll hopefully be closing in a few weeks (although I've been saying that for a month now )

Message edited 7/18/2011 6:14:24 PM.

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

We bought in 2006, and our home is worth a lot less than we paid for it. We have it on the market now and plan on taking a huge loss, in the hopes that we can get a home that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to afford. It totally sucks to lose the money, but I keep telling myself that we'll feel better once we see what we can buy!

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

Posted by Charly

we bought in 2005 and decided to sell and get a bigger house with a lower interest rate. We are taking a HUGE loss (over six figures), now )

Re: S/O to Home Values- if you bought your home before the bubble burst what do you think your future holds?

Our house was meant to be a 5 year house. We bought at the end of 06 for about 20k less than the house was worth because the seller wanted out. It would've been way out of our budget if it had listed at a more appropriate price in that market. It isn't a big house but it is much larger than the other houses we could afford at the time. I thank my lucky stars every day we didn't end up with one of the other two houses we put offers on because their value today has probably dropped 100k.

We tried to sell and almost did this year but our house fell out of contract. We would've taken a 6k loss after real estate commissions though it probably would've turned into 4ish once the buyer paid me back for taxes. Our lawyer said that is really good for this market. Oh well.

Now we will probably stay in the house another 3-5 years and see where the market is by then.