soliciting advice!

[baby.fatty]

Hi all -
I'm going to ask for any and all help y'all can give me because I'm going a little nutty trying to think through my real estate decisions right now.

Here's my scene: I have owned a 2-bed 1 bath 975 sq.ft. condo, built in the late 70s, in the middle of Fremont since fall of '03, and for a lot of reasons I'd like to move into a house or townhome in a lower-nightlife Seattle neighborhood.

My husband is starting a 10-month graduate program in July and will not be working, and while we can subsist in the condo on my teacher income, we can't really afford to increase the mortgage until he goes back to work. FYI, my husband is a social worker and right now I make more than he does.

Oh, and we're trying to get pregnant and ideally we'd like to move into a place that will work for us with up to two kids. It's been our plan to stick it out until grad school is over and the kids actually arrive, but I'm telling you: Fremont is really really starting to drive us crazy.

So as I see it, I have four options.
1.) Stick it out in frat boy hell for another year with the plans to sell next summer.
2.) Sell now and buy a house with a risky loan (interest only ARM?) that will have an artificially low payment with plans to refinance when my husband goes back to work in a year.
3.) Sell now and rent until hubby goes back to work, buy next summer.
4.) Rent out our condo to frat boys and rent a house until the right time comes around to buy.

I'm not really a big fan of #4, but choosing between options #1-3 requires me to have a clue about the state of the market... and it turns out I don't have one. I'll take thoughts from anyone who is willing to give me the time of day... Thanks for reading.

Sarah

[Big Mike 34]

Number 1 is by far your best option....

1) Now is a tough time to sell and will be probably for the next year....I would however put the place up and sell only if you can make a profit and if someone does buy you will have the money to RENT a nicer place

2) Now is a horrible time to buy.... prices are dropping... and I think due to drop a lot in the next 6 to 12 months.....Do you really want to buy a place and have it worth less then you paid for it.....especially when...

3) Had you just waited you would be able to afford a nicer house....as the prices drop...

4) It sounds crazy to me that you would even be thinking of having a baby before you guys are settled and your partner is out of school and has a job.

5) What if your spouse gets a great job opportunity in Spokane or Portland and you just bought a house....

Stick it out...Live on Love for another year or two....Don't go into debt now...Don't bite off way more then you can chew....

[Notabull]

"1.) Stick it out in frat boy hell for another year with the plans to sell next summer.
2.) Sell now and buy a house with a risky loan (interest only ARM?) that will have an artificially low payment with plans to refinance when my husband goes back to work in a year.
3.) Sell now and rent until hubby goes back to work, buy next summer.
4.) Rent out our condo to frat boys and rent a house until the right time comes around to buy."

Option 2 is just a bad option. Besides, you can't really get a risky loan these days anyway. Even the IO loans are pretty bad in interest rate. Don't do it. Seriously. I mean it.

Option 4 sounds like it will be too much hassle and something you really don't want to do. In my opinion, this will likely be more hassle than it's worth. It sounds like you have a lot going on in your life.

Option 1 is an option, but if you're really going to go insane then it's a bad option. Personal happiness should trump financial considerations (to a point) in my opinion. If it's just annoying to you and not a real problem, then staying put is probably ultimately the least stressful option. You're not going to make a killing selling a condo a year before buying a house, although you might come out a little ahead.

So you're pretty much left with option 3. Don't forget that you can *try* to sell, and if that doesn't work you can just stop trying. It's not like you're obligated to sell once you get into it, although your agent might pressure you to keep lowering your price until they get their commission. If you feel that you don't have much renovation/painting to do before you put it up for sale, then why not give it a go?

I'm not sure what the condo market is like in Freemont right now, but you can easily find out. Go onto Redfin and set yourself up with a search for condos in your ZIP. You'll get an email every day with new listings, price changes, and condos that go pending and sell. This will give you a very good idea of the market in Freemont and it'll only take a few weeks for you to get a good picture. Do not look at sales that are older than a couple of months; last year's pricing is not relevant to your situation.

A real estate agent can't be relied upon to give you good advice, in general. There are exceptions, but they're *exceptions*.

[Notabull]

"I'm not really a big fan of #4, but choosing between options #1-3 requires me to have a clue about the state of the market... and it turns out I don't have one. I'll take thoughts from anyone who is willing to give me the time of day... Thanks for reading.

One more thing. If you don't have a clue about the market, then get one! Don't mean to be rude there. Take my advice in my previous post and follow your market like a buyer of your condo. Imagine you're in the market for a condo in Freemont and see what the inventory is like. Set up the search, get the email updates, watch how fast/slow things are going.

Be very careful about specific advice on the "market" from people on blogs. People like me!! I might only know about my market, or might have no clue at all and think we're in a depression or spiraling inflation/deflation (pick your poison). Personally, I don't have a clue how the market in Freemont is going, and it's really easy for you to find out anyway so you really don't need to ask.

Best of luck!

[sniglet]

I'd vote for option 3. Prices are just starting a substantial decline in our region, and you will be able to buy homes MUCH cheaper in a couple years. Sell the condo, rent for a year or two, and then buy a home at decent prices.

Condo prices, in particular, are going to take a MAJOR bath when all the new developments come on line in the next couple years. There are so many cranes running in the Puget Sound (Seattle, Bellevue, etc) that it makes my head spin. There is a mass of supply about to come on the market, and combined with the credit crunch (i.e. making it harder for people to get financing) things will get ugly.

[biliruben]

If you have the energy to sell and rent (which is what I just did), then do it. If not, just hang tough in the condo until you can't stand it anymore.

[biliruben]

I moved out of a 1970s condo in fall 2003, BTW. 3635 Fremont by any chance?

I think older condos will probably hold their value a bit better than new ones, but they'll all decline more than SFHs, is my guess.

[mukoh]

I think sticking it out until your husband gets a job is the best decision. No need to risk anything. Its just 10 months not that long.

[ira s]

Maybe sell the condo now and buy in a much lower priced area, where you could get a house and a yard for what you sell the condo for.

[WaitingForSanity]

I'd like to hear more about what is wrong with Fremont. I was considering moving there but your post is making me think again.

[baby.fatty]

Thanks, everyone, for your advice. Notabull, I'm totally going to subscribe to Fremont condo listings on Redfin pronto to get more familiar with the neighborhood sales.

Sniglet, I was definitely interested in what you pointed out about the condo glut that's a-comin'. Somehow I had thought that my lower-end condo wouldn't be competing with buyers who were after the granite-countertop-blahdeblah that's getting built all over. Anyone else have thoughts? I thought that since my condo was pretty much the definition of an entry point to the market it would fall less precipitously than some of the others.

and biliruben - yep, that's my building! The guy I bought from was an elderly gent who sold to move in with his daughter in Virginia, so I'm guessing that's not you.

And what's wrong with Fremont probably isn't as wrong if you're not right in the "nightlife" area. Here are some things that have happened in the last week: some drunk guys raced shopping carts down my street at 2am; two sorority girls peed right next to my balcony in the parking lot while I was sitting on my porch with my friend who's a smoker; I found a sweater and a pair of pants sopping wet left on top of my car; my sister came over on a Saturday night and when she went to leave there was an artistic display of half-full beer bottles and cans left on the hood of her car. I'm 31 and too old for this crap...

[biliruben]

Too funny! Yeah I lived (renting from the out-of-country owner) 2 floors (4th) above your unit for 8 years. I still have the dents in my car to prove it! Park on the N side of the lot at your own risk. Drunks like to turn around there. It sounds like it has gotten even worse than it was, but being on top insulated me some. I was kinda surprised the guy who sold to you lasted as long as he did, to tell the truth. He had some serious health issues, but insisted on living alone.

My landlord sold it in 2004 for a little over 200K, though it would probably go for 100K more today. I would guess you paid and your's is worth a little less. I would assume even at the depths of the worst bust I can fathom, you will still probably get out what you put in in 2003, but I wouldn't count on too much more unless you sell pretty soon. It's a great entry-level condo that actual humans can afford, so it has some appeal.

Go to redfin, specify condos only, zero in on Fremont and look at the sales history and forsale units over time. For some reason they list your building as 3633, but it's definitely 3635. You can get a great feel for where the market, was, is and will be by looking at what sold last summer, what sold recently and for how much, and what's just been sitting for months that would have been snapped up in a day a year ago.

Check out the conversion at 3636 Evanston behind you, for instance (Man, was that a party spot when it was still apartments - you had to have a BAC over .2 to enter the premises. We called it Lake Flaccid). The sales and list prices this year are nearly all well below the sales last year. Part of that is probably a function of it being a recent conversion, but it's also a function of the market.

[sniglet]

[Markor]