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Owners Hold Off On Sales Of Homes
Lesley and Craig Sterling of Chevy Chase decided to spend about $300,000 to renovate their 60-year-old house rather than sell it and buy a $800,000 property that was in need of upgrading.
(By Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)
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Other potential sellers say their bigger concern is that if they turn over their house to another family before they themselves find someplace to move, they will have to carry two mortgages, rent back their own house, or move to an interim rental while they look around.
Plenty of homeowners dislike the idea of two mortgages, say agents, and others just do not have enough cash to make the stretch.
"It's a timing issue," Sitrin said. "And the old way of doing it is completely reversed." Instead of being able to sell a house with a 60-day settlement date and then take that time to look for a house, a seller has to "know where they're moving to first," he said, because they may not be able to find a new place within 60 days.
Even those who are not trying to buy another house can be frozen in place. Real agent Champion said she is concerned for an older client and for elderly residents in general. Champion is advising Theodora Gregory, 70, a Northeast Washington resident whose medical condition requires independent or assisted living, not to list her Deanwood house until she lands a spot in one of those facilities.
"I'm afraid to put her house on the market because it'll sell immediately and we haven't found a place for her to go," Champion said.
Gregory, a federal employee who has owned her home for 20 years, said she is heeding Champion's advice. "I just haven't been able find a place to move into," she said. "They're either not very good or they're too expensive."
This nervousness about the market is boosting business for home remodelers, local companies said. "I meet with people every day who are afraid," said Rob Maggin, founder of Paramount Construction Inc. in Rockville.
Craig and Lesley Sterling of Chevy Chase turned to Paramount to add on to their 60-year-old Colonial because they could not find another house they wanted. About two months into the renovation, when they realized the project was going to cost about twice as much as they had budgeted, they considered selling.
"But the wind-up was, we were really afraid to do it. We were afraid we would get caught in this feeding frenzy," said Craig Sterling, a fine-arts photographer. It made more sense to renovate, he said, even at a cost of $300,000, because the house cost $275,000 in 1992.
The only houses the couple had found, "were going to cost $700,00 or $800,000" and were about the same size and age, he said. "So you're still going to have to walk in and put in $200,000 or $250,000 in renovations. You're still dealing with old kitchens and old bathrooms."
