Housing Market Slowdown

[Couple of Lakers]

Originally Posted by MeredithMan

I think one of the major problems you are facing--market conditions aside--is that the physical constraints of your home, (i.e., size), proximity to a busy road, and shallowness of that cove even in a non-drought year, severely limits your pool of potential buyers. You obviously can't change these physical factors, but have you had a conversation with your RE agent about strategies/ideas to market around these, other than price?

A wise person told me many years ago that before buying a property, think about who would buy it when you go to sell it in the future. Will it appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers? If not, you may be stuck.

Unfortunately, "the market" can be an unforgiving beast. We've been in this boat before as well, when we sold our house in CT to move back to MA in 2014. House was on the market for 9 months, and we eventually took a $400K haircut from our purchase price to be able to move on with our lives. The only saving grace was that RE prices in MA had declined too, so we were able to find a similar house and have a similar mortgage payment as we did in CT.

Thanks for your input. We understand what you're saying but without actually seeing the property in person we can say this.

Yes our place is small which we believe is reflected in the price. Someone could also add a second story which is approved and end up with a property worth much more for a minimal investment.

Pretty much all properties on Weirs Blvd are close to the street too. That's never been an issue with us. We can't even hear traffic inside. We're lucky to be one of the few places on the water side too. Not having to cross the street is huge.

Langley cove doesn't have a problem with shallowness itself. Just in front of the decks in units 1, 2, and 3. Our dock has always had deep enough water so we never removed our boat until late in the season. There's not even an issue now with our spot with the lake this low. The association beach is beautiful year round and the diving dock always has plenty of depth right until we take it out.

So unless we're missing something the only physical factors we're seeing would be size and the water level off of our deck. Everything else in our opinion and the realtors as well seems to check all of the boxes for not being a million dollar property.

The real estate market has always been unforgiving in our opinion. Buying or selling. Luckily we don't have to sell and would never feel stuck. It's been our dream home for many years. The more we talk about it the more we question if we're making the right decision. We're spontaneous like that. We're not even sure exactly where we will end up but will figure it out.

Our real estate agents, and other agents too, thought our place was a good deal and would sell fairly quick even before we slashed our price. Again, our reason for chiming in and thinking that yes, there is a slowdown. Also most people would probably not be buying to live here full time like us. Vacation homes we don't think are an option right now for many like they were in the past and that limits our buyer pool.

At this point we've been thinking about taking it off the market and waiting until early spring to try again if we don't change our minds all together. Who knows what the market will look like 6 months from now.

Thank you everyone for this thread. Lots of good insight.