[SeeGeeWhy]

With all of the supply coming on the market in the last 8 months in both re-sale, new builds, etc, we really wanted to get back on the market to see if we could get something that was even more in line with what we wanted when we first bought back in 2007. The place we're in now was 90% in line with what we wanted at the time from both a house and a financial perspective - which we thought was exceptional given the market we bought in. Since then, our taste in what we want in a home hasn't changed much, but our financing goals have changed drastically as we now want to move into a place that we could carry on one salary - both as a hedge for potential job loss as well as giving one of us the option to stay at home once our baby arrives.

We first listed our place a few months before Christmas to see if we'd get any interest. We had a lot of showings and traffic on open houses, but no feedback or offers. There were 11,000 - 12,000 listings on the market at the time, so there was a true abundance of options, so despite our place being very unique and in a desirable location there was little chance of us standing out.

The house was difficult to price because it is tough to feel out what kind of return investors would be looking for in such a wacky market (so an intrinsic value calculation based on regional rental rates beared little fruit), and there were very few comparable solds in the area (which is how most realtors will price your house). Adding those factors up, it was hard to compete, and it was very hard to know what type of person to target.

We took the house off the market for Christmas because traffic is low during that time, and the attitude in the market was very poor. We went back to the drawing board and took the chance to make our house as appealing as possible to move in right away, and not to think about the investor (given that most people probably aren't looking to invest unless it is at a deep discount). We painted, decorated a bit, and dropped the listing price about 5% from what we bought it at. We got a similar amount of traffic as before, but this time, there were only 5,000 - 6,000 listings on the market, and we started getting feedback.

The good news is that we received an offer in less than two weeks, just under our list price. We didn't need to have a single open house.

If the deal goes through, the sale price on our place will have dropped 7.7% from the time we bought at the peak in 2007 to today... not bad considering the average loss in the market being 20% or so...

Expenses related to improvements and sales were a significant amount, about 7.3% of our original purchase price, but that expense should pay itself back within 4 years considering the reduction in monthly mortgage costs - which seems reasonable to me given that we expect to live in our new house for at least 5 years.

Our realtor mentioned that it appears that it is young professional couples buying in the 300 - 450k range that are moving the market right now. No one is buying condos, no one is buying above 500k, and investors are still sitting on the side.

Ducay, I think the lesson I've learned the most from this (which is my first home purchase) is to set goals for yourself and try not to "win" against the market all the time. As long as you are getting what you want out of your purchase, and being reasonable about it, you will be able to sleep at night despite the doom and gloom headlines that can permeate through the media.