When I originally wrote this article, we had no offers on our home and we were feeling somewhat negative about it. However, last week we accepted an offer on our home and it’s scheduled to (hopefully) close in July.
It’s been nearly four months and our house hasn’t sold yet.
We’ve had exactly 30 showings and great reviews, yet no offers.
Not even a single lowball offer.
Our home is priced quite competitively and below comparables, so we are afraid to lower the price any further.
We are already going to lose money with what our home is priced at now so we are currently wondering about other possible options. I knew selling a home would be stressful, but I didn’t realize that it would be this stressful. Many ideas have been going through my mind but it’s hard to decide what the best decision is.
Below are some of the things we have been thinking about possibly doing since our house hasn’t sold yet.
Make a temporary decision.
There are many decisions we could make just for the time being.
We could take our home off the market temporarily to see if our neighborhood experiences a rebound. Temporarily doing this could be risky though as our neighborhood could lose value over time instead of gaining value.
However, there is a chance that our neighborhood could go up, which would mean that we might not lose as much money if we were to rent it out while we waiting for it to rebound.
Move back home.
Of course, one of our options is just to move back home since our house hasn’t sold yet. Right now we are just renting in Colorado, so we do have the option to move back home at the end of our lease.
This isn’t the ideal situation as we didn’t move ALL the way out here just to move back to St. Louis one year later. However, this is most likely our best choice as well as the most realistic one if it doesn’t sell.
Moving back home would also get rid of a lot of the worries that go along with the options below.
Rent our home to long-term renters.
We are debating renting out our home on a long-term basis. We could most likely find long-term renters somewhat easily and I definitely think we could charge more than our mortgage payment each month.
We wouldn’t get rich from renting it out to long-term renters, but it could be enough to cover our mortgage and possibly one day even pay it off and keep it as a rental forever. There also wouldn’t be a ton of work involved, at least not when compared to renting it out to short-term renters.
The major downsides of renting out our home on a long-term basis would be if we had bad renters and the fact that we would be long distance landlords. We might need a property management company and if we did that then the revenue from the monthly rent would be much lower.
Rent our home to short-term renters.
On the other hand, we could also think about renting out our home on a short-term basis on a website such as Airbnb, VRBO, or Homeaway. This would also allow us to have a place to come back to, which would be very nice.
The major downside to doing this is that we are so far away and it would be hard to manage something like this from states away. This is because someone would have to clean up after each stay, restock items such as toilet paper, and so on. I’ve also searched and there are no companies in our area that offer property management for vacation rentals either.
Drop the price significantly.
We originally priced the home below what we bought it for back in 2009, and we’ve dropped it since it’s been listed as well.
The last and least fun option would be to just drop the price until someone bites, but that would mean losing a significant amount of money.
However, the plus side would mean that the house would hopefully sell quicker. This is not an option I would ever want to take but it does exist…
Have you sold a house before? Did you ever feel panicky about whether it would sell or not? What would you do if there were no offers on a home you had for sale?
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Sending good vibes! I’m sorry it has been so stressful 🙁
Thanks!
I hated being a landlord because I had terrible renters. It was a nightmare and the sad things is the property management company was shady and kept overcharging for things. If you have good renters and a good property management company you are golden, but you don’t know that right away. Also, if you have disposable income for when things go wrong. Not ideal though!!
And this is why I’m leaning towards not renting it out haha.
Glad you ended up with an offer!
The one and only time I’ve sold a house, it was when the bubble really started to grow. I needed to sell it quickly, so I probably underpriced it a bit. On the first weekend, I got two bids and was able to nudge one up a bit.
In other words, I was very lucky. Enjoy the relief of having a bid. There’s still rigamarole obviously, but the most harrying part is over now.
Oh yes, I am definitely enjoying it. I’m hoping that everything goes as planned and it successfully closes next month.
I’m so glad things have worked out for you! And I hope this article is a sign from the good Lord that things will work out for us.
We listed our home at the end of May. It’s almost 4 weeks later and we have only had 2 showings, no offers. The feedback has basically been “nice home, not for us”. We had an open house on Sunday with about 5 people stopping through, who all seemed to like the home. No bites. I watch the views daily on Zillow, and check to see if anyone new has favorited our home.
And with great disappointment, and a major move looming next month, we dropped the price yesterday. It’s now listed for less than we paid. We have looked at renting, but there are no property management companies here, either. I am about to approach some friends to operate as pseudo property managers and just hope… and do lots of praying.
I hope things work out for you Kirsten. Our house is also below what we paid and it gives me a headache just to think about that.
We are also considering renting out a house. We are looking to move cities but are not ready to go yet. However, we’ve decided that if we find the perfect house in the new city, we’ll buy it and rent it out. This stresses me out a bit (would it be difficult to rent a house when you’re in a different city? what if we can’t find a suitable renter?). But it sounds like you should be in a good position. Goodluck with the closing!
Thanks Jess!
So glad you got an offer. Our home is a historical Victorian and has been on the market almost two years. We are hesitant to rent since it is historical.
Yes, that would be hard to rent out. I don’t know if I could do that either!
The decision to rent a home is such a tough choice to make. But if you end up deciding to rent, one great positive is that it will give you the opportunity to learn about that channel of passive income. Who knows? Maybe it will turn out to be a profitable endeavor and you’ll find more opportunities in real estate.
Yes, you just never know 🙂
Eeeek! This would be horrible. I haven’t owned a house before and can’t imagine this situation honestly. I think I would rather get rid of the headache and sell lower than keep a house I didn’t want – just as a general matter.
I agree!
Fingers crossed that your current offer goes well. The home inspection will be key. You’ll find out if your potential buyers are reasonable people or not. If they’re unreasonable you can often still work it out but it’s a pain.
Some thoughts about your options in the post.
“Make a temporary decision”
According to a Zillow graph I found, St. Louis as a whole hasn’t seen any home price appreciation for the last couple of years so for planning purposes, I would pencil in little or no expected appreciation. http://www.zillow.com/saint-louis-mo/home-values/
“Rent our home to long-term renters”
AKA “Accidental Landlord.” Unless you expect decent appreciation soon, you would want to make absolutely sure the house is likely to at least break even as a rental when you include ALL likely expenses. Ballpark: ~10% to property manager, ~10% vacancy rate (might go unrented for a month between when one renter leaves and the next renter starts) ~5% for maintenance, property taxes, insurance, condo/HOA fees if any, etc. The key is to know all the expenses beforehand so you don’t accidently lock-in a loss every month. It’s killer emotionally.
“Rent our home to short-term renters”
This might be a good option if you live in a touristy area, otherwise, it’s probably not ideal.
“Drop the price significantly”
A house has a fair market value. It doesn’t matter what you paid, it could be worth a lot more or a lot less than what you paid. If you can swing it without doing a short sale, you can lower the price until you find the highest price at which it will sell.
Of course, if you could make money on it as a rental, including your time managing it, that would change the calculations. Or if you wanted to make rentals an important part of your portfolio and this is just the first one, then that would change the calculations.
But as a general rule of thumb, accidental rentals drive accidental landlords crazy.