Finances & Money • Home

Updates on the home sales on our street

A few weeks ago, I told you our neighbor sold their house in 12 days. I took it as a good sign that the demand for a right-priced house in our area is still strong. Well I have a correction to make. They didn’t sell it in 12 days. They sold it in less than a week! They think the new buyers knew the house would be going on the market and were just waiting for the listing.

The reason they sold the house is to be closer to his new job, which is currently over 35 miles away. That’s no easy commute here in the D.C. area. He lost his job earlier this year in our city (Rockville), but found one shortly after in eastern Maryland.

Their house is paid off (they bought it 30 years ago), and they’ll be able to pay for their new house in cash. But here’s the bad news. He lost his new job. But the ironic news is that he has a good shot at a job opportunity…back in Rockville. Yep, he’ll be commuting all the way back here for his job each day. The weird thing is that they haven’t closed on either house yet, but they’re going through with the sale. I assume they have other plans in mind for their future home.

These neighbors are some of the nicest people I know, but they’ve had the most horrible misfortunes. Two job losses, a major accident that claimed the wife’s eye, breast cancer for the wife (she’s recovering now), all in the last 2-3 years. But they’re not complaining, at least to us. Let’s just hope everything works out for them in the end.

On another note, the other house for sale on our street dropped $50,000 off their initial listing price. It’s now selling for $90,000 less than we paid for our house, but it’s a hard comparison between our two homes. We have more yard, more square footage, a pool and more room to build if needed. But when I talked to the owner a few weeks back, he said he might make it a rental instead. He admitted that he priced it too high, but he found someone to rent the place for a decent monthly profit. The house is still on the market, in case they find a buyer in the meantime.

While I’m not keen on renters moving in so close to our own home, I also don’t want to see the house sold for so much less than for what we bought ours years ago. Renters tend to not care about the appearance of a property, but this homeowner has been pretty good in the past about maintaining the home when he rented to his brother. Time will tell.