Retireby45ish
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2018
- Messages
- 209
DW and I knew we wanted to move in about 1-2 years (max)…the family and situation we moved to this area for had changed so it was time to move on. But we also had bought in a pretty rural area where homes of our size and value (500k) can take a while to move. The previous owner took 3-4 years to sell it.
But along came the pandemic. And housing prices in our area have gone up as out of staters came along from cities looking for a more rural setting.
So we figured we would put it up for sale, 2 years after buying it, and see if we could get someone to pay our “stretch” figure, and make it worth our while to move our timetable ahead. We bought it for $550k (and I thought we may have overpaid a bit at the time, and so we asked $700k now). We tried this past summer (about 10-12 viewers) and had no takers so we took it down. But with inventories tight again now we figured we would try it again. And we got a full price offer on the first day. A nice problem to have, but yikes, now what?!
We will be able to stay in a temporary family place for a few months but then have some decisions to make (where to move to…what will the next chapter in life bring…)
But I guess my question (and fear) is that prices continue to go higher in the 9-12 months before we buy or build our next home. So where should I park all this cash in the meantime and hedge against an increase in home prices? Would buying some REITs be a good hedge against this? Perhaps homebuilder stocks? I know I should put it in cash but I already have a pretty big cash balance so I’m ok with a little variance if there is a better hedge. So thoughts would be appreciated!
Sidenote:
It all felt very easy to say “we will list it and see what happens…” but when someone pays the price you didn’t think you’d get it all becomes very real. Glad I didn’t listen to the realtor who advised us to list for $659k or so. Sheesh.
But along came the pandemic. And housing prices in our area have gone up as out of staters came along from cities looking for a more rural setting.
So we figured we would put it up for sale, 2 years after buying it, and see if we could get someone to pay our “stretch” figure, and make it worth our while to move our timetable ahead. We bought it for $550k (and I thought we may have overpaid a bit at the time, and so we asked $700k now). We tried this past summer (about 10-12 viewers) and had no takers so we took it down. But with inventories tight again now we figured we would try it again. And we got a full price offer on the first day. A nice problem to have, but yikes, now what?!
We will be able to stay in a temporary family place for a few months but then have some decisions to make (where to move to…what will the next chapter in life bring…)
But I guess my question (and fear) is that prices continue to go higher in the 9-12 months before we buy or build our next home. So where should I park all this cash in the meantime and hedge against an increase in home prices? Would buying some REITs be a good hedge against this? Perhaps homebuilder stocks? I know I should put it in cash but I already have a pretty big cash balance so I’m ok with a little variance if there is a better hedge. So thoughts would be appreciated!
Sidenote:
It all felt very easy to say “we will list it and see what happens…” but when someone pays the price you didn’t think you’d get it all becomes very real. Glad I didn’t listen to the realtor who advised us to list for $659k or so. Sheesh.