Opinoins Please

[ron244]

I posted a similar question on the "Hi I am" board, but this board may be more appropriate.
I am 47 and my DW if 45. Using FireCalc, it appears we have enough investments to retire now. Our retirement property is about 400 miles from our current residence. The problem is that our current residence has been for sale since last July. We have already lowered the price about 20% and I'm willing to rent the place out for a while in hopes of a decent offer. We have a trailer (manufactured) house on our retirement property now and we will build a new house when our current house sells. I want us to quit working no later than Sept. 1st and I need to convince my DW. If we cannot rent out the house, it would cost us around 12k per year for taxes, ins. utilities etc. Our jobs are unbearable. How do you decide between peace of mind and finances? According to FireCalc, We will probably have a cushion of 200k minimum after selling our house. I am still unbelievably nervous about not getting a weekly paycheck as well as being the one to talk my DW into retiring.

[aenlighten]

Building a house is risky. Cost overruns are a given and usually start at 20%. Now 200k sounds like plenty but how much are planning on spending? Have you accounted for all the selling and purchase costs, utility hookups, wells, septic tanks, permits, zoning, and fees? Will you even like it once you're there? Should you rent for while to discover the drawbacks? Identify all the risks and reduce them as much as possible before you start.

[ron244]

aenlighten, thanks for the response.
We're allowing about 225k for the new house. We are planning no more than 1600 s.f. with a full walkout basement. This should hopefully be more than enough. We are planning on living in the trailer house (16'x 72') for at least 1 year before we build. I have no idea if we will like it there for the long term. It's been great when we go there for long weekends or the occasional 7-10 days. That's one of are big concerns. How do you go from working 60-70 hours per week to 0?

[crazy connie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ron244 How do you go from working 60-70 hours per week to 0?

1. Sleep till you waken with no alarm.
2. Have coffee on a patio and watch the birds and other wildlife.
3. Read the newspaper instead of catching CNN.
4. Talk to your spouse while cooking a scratch breakfast.
5. Relax and read a few pages of a book before you snooze a siesta a day.
6. Take a walk and let your mind wander.
7. Go shopping for really fresh produce and make a nice dinner while having a sip of a nice beverage.
8. Sleep till you wake up with no more deadlines.
9. Enjoy sex like you did a long time ago.

REPEAT until you want to put thought into doing something or nothing.

ENJOY

[chinaco]

Are you sure you are listing your house for the appropriate amount. If a house does not sell, there is usually an issue. Either there are no buyers (market dried up) or you are listing it too high. My money is on you have listed the house too high. Even though it may have comparables (same size, age, location) selling at a certain level, you house may be less desirable (for whatever reason).

Some other difficulties could be curb appeal, prospective buyers do not like kitchens or baths. OR perhaps the house needs to be painted and prepped.

I suspect that you know what the problem is. If you do not, any competent real estate agent will (should) tell you.

Hopefully you are not in a situation where you have to invest much more money to get the price you want. My comments below assume that the house is otherwise an acceptable house without damage.


You have probably listed it above market. You can try to maximize the selling price by taking more time and lower the price a little at a time.

The problem is that once a house has been on the market for a while, people start to ignore it.

Dump your current realestate agent.

Take the house off the market for a while. Fix what ever might be a discrepancies or something considered undesirable that does not cost much money. Find another agent, Get one that specializes in your area... Someone that is aggressive. Work the deal to give the selling agent an (a bonus) extra point or two of the house commission (directly). (The listing agency and selling agency usually split the commission). When you place it back on the market, price it more aggresively. Know your minimum acceptable asking price.

There are very few situations where I would rent a single house. I can't say for sure I would never do it... but unless there was a very compelling financial reason (that was in the $50k range). No way in h3ll I would bother with renting for $10k or $20k 400 miles away.

Those two sayings may be hitting you right now: 1) timing is everything and 2) Location, Location, Location.

[stargazer08]

This is Ron's DW. The property is listed as commercial. Once it sells, the house comes down. We could have sold the house as residential for about half the list price but decided to change the zoning to commercial (guess we got greedy). That severely cut the pool of buyers. I know commercial property takes longer to sell than residential. We are just coming up on a year from the initial list date. It's funny that we're both fed up with our job situations at the same time. This job dissatisfaction has been going on for a few years and is steadily getting worse not better. My mother retired at 50 and after a few years adjustment, is loving it. I hope to follow in her footsteps just at an earlier age. We have picked a date and have agreed to take the month of May to ponder this decision before making any formal announcements. I like Crazy Connies recipe for adjustment.

[Texas Proud]

Well, changing the zoning does limit you... and if there is no growth in your area you might be stuck for years...

I work in a RE dept of a major bank... and we have some locations that just will not sale.. period... there is so much vacant space around that people can lease for a lot cheaper than buying...

So, unless you property is in a great location... you might not sell nor anywhere near what you think.. BTW, how much land do you have... if less than an acre... also bad.. Are you on a 'hard corner' if not, also bad.. are you on a major road?? I would assume that you have been told this already...

[ron244]

Texas Proud
Thanks for the response.We have approx. 5 acres of land. Its not on the corner, however it is on a busy 4 lane road. There is still some commercial growth in the area and the City we live in is very eager to get commercial development in the area, that's why it was so easy to get the zoning change. You're right about a lot of vacant land being available. I didn't pay too much attention to it until after we put ours up for sale.

Ronc

crazy connie, Sounds great. I can't wait until all of your suggestions become an everyday reality. We do 8 out of 9 when we get a chance to go to our retirement property.