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We want to tell some post-crash real-estate success stories. Need some help.
Have you noticed that the real-estate crash is almost always written about as a bad thing? House prices have been falling for the past five or six years, and everyone acts like it's a calamity. People wouldn't freak out so much if the prices of cars or appliances fell dramatically.
Falling house prices have produced winners. First-time buyers have bought repossessed homes cheap, and have bought condos at great prices. And they've done this at a time when mortgage rates are attractively low.
We want to tell a few of these stories in an article that will run in early July. If you benefited from the housing crash, and would like to be interviewed about it for a story, let me know. Email me the basics of your happy story and how a reporter can contact you to schedule a phone interview.
If we do a story about you, we'll publish your real name and city. No anonymity, no pseudonyms. I know that's a deal-breaker for some people, and if it is for you, no need to send an email. And if we do a story about you, we would love it if you would supply a photo of you and your smiling face with your lovely abode in the background.
Yes, great... We started looking at our current home in May 2008. We had our other house appraised and it came out at $175,000. We couldn't sell it immediately so we rented it out. We found this house going up for auction so we purchased it - a big 4000 sq ft. home from 1953 needing some updates. We closed about Labor Day 2009. Not having a crystal ball, we owned two homes at the same time. We figure we lost $100,000+ in equity as we were able to sell our former home (finally) for $135,000 (in 2010) - what I originally paid in 2000. So, we lost all the remodeling costs associated with our former home too. Then adding insult to injury - the house next door to our current home was sold to a non-profit organization. It is now a "group home" for children - in a area previously not zoned for it. It was approved by a county judge - to the shagrin of the whole neighborhood. What's next?
Thanks,
Curt