If you had to sell your present home within 30 days for what you owe against it, could you?

[Blackhatjack]

This is the problem in a nutshell.

Lack of qualifying buyers is only one aspect of the problem. Among qualifying buyers they have hundreds of homes to choose from, and yet many remain on the sidelines because they are not getting advantageous rates and they are unsure how much to pay today for real estate given the uncertainty over plummeting housing values.

Add to this rising consumer prices for oil, energy, food, etc. Rising unemployment. Rising healthcare costs.

People now understand they are living one paycheck from disaster.

And their retirement accounts are shrinking.

Until people can be assured of the relative value of real estate and mortgages, sales are going to be few and far between. This will kill housing values across the country, and the housing industry and those businesses dependent upon it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Think so

I owe $624. That's six hundred twenty four dollars. Took out a loan on our place five years ago to pay off credit cards, and now it's almost paid off. Best thing we ever did.

[merwin]

3. I'll buy it for $800!

That's $176 in pure profit for you!

:)

[uppityperson]

6. I'll buy it! Crap, Merwin beat me. How about $851?

We could also since have small loan. Actually we could do the credit card bounce thing for a few yrs to make the payments if we had to even. Most people I know couldn't though.

[elifino]

21. I should be able to close in thirty days

Paid cash seven years ago.

Elifino

[flvegan]

2. Within 30 days? No way.

I could get what I owe on it (I think *knocks wood), but nothing is moving here in 30 days unless you discount the place very, very, very deeply.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

4. 30 days is asking alot

Its also historically very unreasonable to set that as the bar. TYpically 8 weeks on the market is what I would consider a 'what the hell moment'

But to answer your question; doubtfully... I owe 128 and my neighbor just got appraised at 135. My unit (condo) is a bit nicer in some important ways (central air / hardwood floors / jacuzzi tub and an in bathroom washer dryer) so I would guess I would appraise at 142-148 but I would not sell in 30 days at that, too many condos for sale in my mkt right now..

[dmallind]

5. No problem

But then I never bought without 20% equity to begin with.

EDIT - I could get a contract in 30 days. It takes longer than that to close in NYS.

[JackintheGreen]

7. For what I owe?

Absolutely!

But I'd likely lose most of my equity.

[Vincardog]

8. I bought for $120,000 I owe $43,000 I could probably get 43K why would I?

[Jimbo S]

9. Pretty sure.

Have 50%+ equity, so for a buyer it would like half-off.

[seriousstan]

10. Yes, both of them.

[slackmaster]

11. Easily

I owe about $100K on a 1,540 square foot single-family house in San Diego.

[JuniperLea]

25. If I were you...

I'd hang onto that beaut forever!

[slackmaster]

29. Yup, I bought it in 1994

And it didn't seem like a bargain at the time.

Nobody knew what was going to happen to housing prices here.

[AlCzervik]

12. within 30 days would be a problem, if i could sell it i'd walk away with money.

we bought less of a house than we could afford, we got a plain old boring 15 year fixed that we have a little less 7 years on and we never borrowed against it. We bought for $209,000 and i think we could get around $300,000. Houses are on the market for a long time now around here.

[supernova]

13. Could get back full worth of property,

since I own it. Any sale would be clear profit.

There are some improvements I need to make though, so minus those.

But I doubt I could do all that in a month. Likely you're talking about six months, tops.

Luckily I don't have to decide anything like that so quickly.

[Vinca]

14. Given oil prices, I think the value of my house might actually be going up.

It's in a beautiful, rural area but only 3 miles from everything.

[CC]

15. I could since we only owe about 25%

of its value and that is low balling the value but I wouldn't. The market is slower around us but has not burst and in another year it will most likely be pretty hard to find something to buy since we have about 25,000 new jobs coming to the area.

[nels25]

16. Nope - I would lose money

and I would lose money if it took me 90 days (which it would pro ably be longer).

[guitar man]

17. it's been paid off since '03

I could sell and make a tidy profit :P

not going to sell yet, I'm going to stay a while and see how high the value goes ;)

[NNN0LHI]

18. I could close on this house for around $225,000 in 30 days if I had too

Owe about $40 thousand on it now.

My taxes each month are more than my house payment though. Thats the killer.

Don

[Lex]

19. Definitely.

nt

[frazzled]

20. I don't know about 30 days ...

I'm not sure much of anything is selling in 30 days right now, especially condos, which is what we bought 3 1/2 years ago.

When we sold our home in another state, I have to admit we did pretty well. We took the entire equity from that sale and put it into our next real-estate purchase--but not without first trying the best we could to determine that we were buying a property that would (hopefully) retain its value. This meant our mortgage is considerably less than the amount the property is worth, even if it sells for no more than what we paid for it. We'd lose some of the equity we made from our last house, but that felt like such a gift in the first place. Maybe we should have put it under our mattress instead of investing it in a new property. But you have to live, eh.

[we can do it]

22. Absolutely -

We owe 75K on a 250K house. What kind of a nut "needs" to sell their home off that fast anyway? and in any market?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. We owe $120,000 - House is valued (by Zillow) at $404,000.

I think we could sell it easily.

[JuniperLea]

24. Depends on where you live and what your principle amount is...

I couldn't. There are units in my complex selling for $30k less than my mortgage principle... well, truthfully, they AREN'T selling... they are sitting on the market for months and months and months... even the short sales... and the "bank owned" signs are coming down all over Los Angeles county because of the rising incidence of squatters and vultures claiming to be the owner and renting the empty house out to someone else.

Then there's the new tactic... price the home for an unbelievably low amount, and when you get a bunch of bids, stir the pot and start your own bidding wars.

It's ugly out there.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. Yes, I could.

I'm very lucky that I bought this duplex that we live in back in 1990 when there was a "bust" period here, lots of bankruptcies and foreclosures. It was a HUD house, and I had to replace the roof, and I've refinanced a couple of times, but even with that expense I could still get more than twice what I paid for it. I don't intend to sell though because my tenants pay about 3/4 of my monthly mortgage payment, and they're getting a great deal with our current market.

There's some irony here because I was forced to buy back in 1990 because my landlady at the time got foreclosed on and I got evicted.

[elehhhhna]

27. Yes. Sugar Land is boomin'. Not CRAZY booming, but not busting, either.

[pitohui]

28. no way you could close on a house in 30 days around here

i bought my house at a previous bottom (the s&l crash) and i was a motivated buyer with a motivated agent in a buyer's market with a gov't assist program in place to expedite because i'd been shot at in my old place by crack dealers...and it still took seven weeks, you just can't find a house, get the financing in order, inspected, negotiate, and get to closing in 30 days, we are talking about the biggest purchase that normal people ever make

i don't know if i could arrange for a title search and inspection and GIVE it away as a gift in 30 days