NPR: Boy, Is It Hard to Sell a House These Days

Boy, Is It Hard to Sell a House These Days

Today, Morning Edition's Your Money segment looked at just how hard it has been to sell a house in America this summer.

I know this story. I'm living it.

When I moved to Washington in late spring to take this job, I had to put my house in Milton, Mass., (just south of Boston) on the market. It's a great place — four bedrooms, big yard, two-minute walk to the subway — in a community that a magazine just named the seventh best place to live in America. My real estate agent figured it would go in a jiffy.

Hardly a sniff all summer. Alcatraz gets more offers.

Just like the Cascones, the family featured in Jason Beaubien's Morning Edition piece, we've had to knock down the price on the house ... which is very hard to do because it makes you feel like a loser. And Ken Fears, an economist at the National Association of Realtors, says that it's likely even more concessions on price will be needed nationally before the worst is over. Ouch.

OK, time for a big pity party. Anybody else have a house horror story to tell?

1:19 PM ET | 08-24-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

We put our 100 year-old partially restored North Florida home on the FSBO market last May and had a buyer in 4 days. We moved 8 hours away. Unfortunately, due to the buyers' illness, the contact fell apart 2 days prior to closing. We had to put it on the market, now with a realtor, have dropped the price 4 times, and have been making double payments now for over 12 months. We are not sub-prime borrowers, but OUR credit will be decimated because of the repercussions of what has taken place in the mortgage market.

Sent by Eileen McCoy | 2:40 PM ET | 08-24-2007

The housing price in Queens, NYC near Nassau County are still very strong. We bought our house in 1997 for $525K and last month a similar house across the street sold for about around 2 millions at least.

Sent by Wayne | 4:29 PM ET | 08-24-2007

This is, so far, a success story. Somehow, I would guess by the grace of God, I managed to get a contract on my 2/2 condo in Atlanta within 6 months. I lowered my asking price by $5K once and went $2K below that. We close on 9/6 provided all goes well. I was prepared to be on the market for up to 2 years, particularly since the construction rate here is astronomical, and I am surrounded by $500L-$1M townhomes. All I can say is sometimes in life, you get lucky (again, fingers crossed for the closing)

Sent by Linda | 4:29 PM ET | 08-24-2007

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