Santa, All I Want for Christmas is a Decent-Sized, Decent-Priced House--The Saga

As you might have guessed, I got coal in my stocking...or would have if I bothered to put one up.

All this talk of a sinking housing market, prices falling, and now's the time to jump in--but jump into WHAT? The houses are crap, and should be tear-downs. The ones that aren't crap are about $50k overpriced.

The ones that are decent and realistically priced are about 30 miles out of town, so I end up either driving more or paying more to stay in town--some savings. Some sinking housing market! Now I know what New Yorkers feel like--if THEY want affordable housing, they have to go into New Jersey, and then they have to get a car to make up for it. Again, where's the savings?

Meanwhile, I'm driving our real estate agent mad with my pickiness, but this may end up being our LAST house, so I want it to be a good one.

What I've discovered in my quest to get out of this apartment:

1. You either pay more or drive more to get decent housing in this area.

2. Real estate investors seem to snap up all the good, cheap housing at foreclosure auctions, which take "line of credit" financing (usually from a HELOC) to fulfill the requirement of a 15-day settlement with the auctioning lender. I don't have a line of credit to tap, and mortgages take 30 days to close.

3. The crap I'm left to sort through (and everybody else shopping for a home here) is stuff that the investors didn't want, because of quality or price.

4. Home sellers insist on either doing absolutely nothing to their homes (in some cases, since about 1921), or they do the HGTV-overboard things (bling it up), causing it to go to market overpriced. I'd like to get my own appliances and paint my own walls, thank you, but no--the choices have already been made and convey, whether I like them or not. Vinyl siding? Please! It melts in fires.

There's no middle ground here--it's all or nothing...LITERALLY.

5. There's always something wrong with the houses with the right price in the right zip codes--too close to busy streets/railroad tracks (I hate squished kitties)/bodies of water, in a flood zone, butted up to a school or industrial area, the yard is microscopic, there's no garage or driveway, the main source of A/C is window units, the neighborhood's ill-kept, or there's a wandering herd of teenagers in the area up to no good--usually going around stabbing other people's inflatable decorations.

6. In order to get a house with a kitchen and bathroom I can turn around in without killing myself, I have to go for more bedrooms than I really need--most of the 2-bedroom houses have a smaller kitchen than I have right now, with little to no counter space. In order to get a workable kitchen, I'd have to go up to a 3- or 4-bedroom--what a horrible waste of space!

After the holiday, I'm going to the rental office and making an offer on my apartment--it's better than many of the houses we've seen in the last two weeks. After looking for houses off and on for the last 4 years, I think I may already be living in the one I want. I guess it's either stay here forever or build, providing I can find land, which leads me to another dilemma.

Part 2 of the house saga:

Upon further analysis, I discovered that I am priced about 30 miles outside my intended market--in order to find a decent house in a decent price range (with a workable kitchen) that doesn't require extensive demolition and reconstruction, I'd have to go roughly 30 miles outside of town. Any more than that, and I'd be in a different state.

I'd have to find a house cheap enough to factor in a different car--we'd have to buy Hubby a diesel car with a TDI engine that gets about 50 MPG for the commute and anticipated future gas prices.

I have a choice: I can either wait until something...SOMEthing livable comes open in my intended market, or I can beam out of civilization, buy a different car, and worry about how I'm going to get out of the house if Hubby's job transfer request comes through (one of these years). We've been trying to move to a cheaper cost-of-living state, but his requests seem to fall into a black hole, and now there's nothing available in our intended market states.

Look for the next poll to ask my readers the question: should I stay and wait, or bug out now, buy a car, and damn the consequences?

Part 3 and epilogue:

I've finally figured out how this real estate racket works around here--after having a heart-to-heart with a buyer's agent, I learned people around here (and probably elsewhere) are putting their homes on the market starting at APPRAISED or ASSESSED value (appraisals and property tax assessment value usually run higher than market value by about $20k) and discounting to something closer to MARKET value (usually about $10k over neighborhood comps). This assures two things:

1. The real estate agent is sure to get a good commission.

2. The homeowner is sure to get full market value for the home.

This is how my particular neck of the woods GETS and STAYS over-priced. Apparently, the homeowners around here aren't interested in quick sales, but rather holding out for that last dollar of equity. In this current market environment, that isn't a good thing--especially when you're at risk for default, but apparently the homeowners aren't being wisely counseled by their agents. A price that's 10% below market value will sell the house in a week or less, but it also cuts into equity and commissions.

I guess having two losers is worse than having one winner. I just thank some deity or other that there seems to be a never-ending supply of foreclosures around here, and time is on my side. I can always take my marbles and go elsewhere.

One more thing: my agent also told me that the houses getting all the media attention are the $300k-and-up houses in overbuilt markets like Las Vegas, California, Phoenix, Miami--you know the ones. In my state, the nearest market that can be considered "overbuilt" is in D.C. You don't want me anywhere NEAR D.C.!