Posted on 02/08/2020 8:40:39 AM PST by Mean Daddy
My wife and I are considering selling our existing home and building a new home. Our approach is to sell the house, rent a furnished house/apartment (we have a yellow lab) while the house is being built.
We don't want to worry about having two houses. My question is, what did you do to minimize the amount of moving? Store furniture in PODs? Store semi-trailer? What tips do you have? What would you do differently? Anyone sell & build at the same time? Did you use a realtor who'd purchase your house if it didn't sell after XX numbers of days/months?
Yes situations like you describe happen. Very sad. Keep reading the thread. Keep reading about my very positive experiences with a property management company. There’s no way to say with certainty that a lowlife tenant won’t trash my property. But using experts greatly reduces that possibility.
I see down-thread, you already know a builder. While not the first step, it’s a very important step.
First step would be to draw up plans for your home. Let the plans sit for a few months... review them and see if you want to make any changes. Changes on paper are cheap. Changes during construction are expensive.
Give your plans to your builder to get an estimate. It’s only an estimate...and will probably cost more to build. Are you comfortable with the estimate? Is the builder comfortable building the house per plan?
If you choose to use another builder, have them onboard before making any other decisions. Builders with quality construction workers are HARD TO FIND nowadays. Builders are hiring anybody that can pick up a hammer.
These comments about selling everything makes me feel good for that is what I am working on. Thanks everyone for confirming that I am on the right track.
Things that worked fine in your old home will not fit in the new one.
It will save you time and money and hair.
Do not go with the "we will buy it if it does not sell" people unless there is some reason you have to sell quickly.
Get an office agent, not an independent agent. If you get a bad agent you can get an office to switch, with an independent you are stuck. Read the blasted contract and mark out the part where if you fire your agent they still get their commission if the home sells in a year.
We had a bad agent the first go around and had to trade her in at the office. The second agent had our house sold at list in five days.
Interesting. I’ve subscribed to their YouTube channel. Thanks.
My simple advice is this:
1. Don't move yourself. When you look at the aggravation of moving combined with the complexities of the two-step process you've presented, the money you spend will be well worth it. You may also get a storage rate from the mover that is LESS than what you'd pay for a self-storage location. If you're moving a considerable distance, I'd generally recommend using one of the national franchises like United, Atlas, North American, etc.
2. If you're moving into a smaller place, you'll have to get rid of some of your belongings before you move. When it comes to furniture, get rid of anything that may be old enough to be replaced in the new home.
3. If you're moving into another place of comparable size or larger, it may be worthwhile to keep as much as you can and worry about getting rid of it AFTER you're in the new home and have a good understanding of what you want to keep, where it goes, etc. Don't get rid of a few small things just to save money in the moving process. It likely won't be worth the time, and won't make a huge difference in the cost of the move.
4. If you're building a new home and truly want it all to be a NEW home, the advice others are posting here about getting rid of all your furniture and starting all over again may be worthwhile.
“What we found was that it appeared the builders in our area were apparently attempting to recoup their losses from 2008 and the square footage price they were attempting to extort from us was ridiculous.”
Same thing we’re going thru. May wind up selling our “dream” waterfront lot. I could build it but getting too old. That goes for subcontracting it out too...acting as contractor myself. Just too many other things we want to do. Existing home prices per square foot are much lower in the same area.
I sold my house and moved into temporary quarters while building (having built) the house where I live now.
Too bad you don’t get do-overs on all the mistakes you make the first time you build a house.
My only advice is, if you don’t use the most expensive builder available, hire an architect to oversee the work, ESPECIALLY the work thet will be invisible once the walls go up.
And take photos of the construction - every room, every stage. If you ever need to fix something structural, having images of how it was put together will be very helpful.
Talk to your accountant - Capital Gains Tax would not be a pleasant thing to get stuck with, easy to handle if you follow the guidelines.
Auctions work great for selling personal property and buying replacement items that you don’t want to store, plus saving you money.
Not all Realtors are crooks.
Spot-on about photos during all phases of construction. We did that and it’s paid off over the years.
“We do anal criminal and background checks”
That sounds too invasive to me.
Move into the new house and put the old on the market at a cheap price so that it sells right away.
I’m all about convenience rather than worry about a few bucks left on the table.
This life is short, lower your stress.
We sold in Texas, moved to Florida. Have a moving sale, sell absolutely everything you can replace reasonably later (keep your tools and forearms of course). Pods can eat your sack lunch in terms of storage fees unless you are concerned about water damage etc. An air conditioned storage building should be your best bet for storage.
Another painless way to deal with personal property: unload it on your heirs.
My parents often unload their stuff on me. It’s mostly great stuff and appreciated. :)
Your stuff will go to a designated someone eventually, so why not now?
Yep. My husband is a subcontractor and knows what the current rate should be for the type of house we were trying to build. When he confronted them with this, one actually told us, “oh, we don’t go by square foot price”, LOL. We bought waterfront for much less than what they wanted to charge us to build on a landlocked property an hour west of the coast.
My husband and I are planning on becoming Winter Texans in 5-7 years. We are going to buy a manufactured home in an old farts commune with a golf course.
We live in a manufactured home now as well and I have no regrets over not buying an overpriced stick built. Because our payment was only $600/mo on a 25 yr note, we were able to raise 4 kids with a stay at home mom. Now I am a stay at home empty nester and it’s very nice.
We lived in a small rental place between homes for 7 months. 90% of our material possessions were in boxes during this time. We learned that we could live without them and not even miss them.
Unload, simplify, sell, give away, haul to the landfill. Take only what you regularly use and need.
Use 2 x 6 exterior studs and heat the floor if you live in a climate that has winter. Install cost for radiant floor is higher, but your heat bill will be reduced.
it always takes longer than promised or expected. I spent 6 months in a hotel waiting for the home to be finished.
Always takes longer.....
Also interested in geothermal heat...
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