Speaking of taking losses on property sales ..

I thought I should revisit this story from the early days of this blog. If you click through the link you will see that the property was listed as "very competitively priced" at $899,900 and a few months later the price was slashed by $100,000 so if the initial statement was in fact true I assume it really must have been a steal at that point. Well guess again, the final selling price as it turns out was $725,000 (not even counting any incentives that might have been tossed in), nearly $175,000 below the initial asking price (which the agent told us was very competitive) and about $25,000 less than the previous owners paid for the home in 2006. And that's not even counting what they paid the real estate agent to market the property to you and I as such a steal or the other hidden costs of short-term speculative real estate investments. All told they may have ended up with almost $100,000 less than they started with as a result of this "investment" in which they put down virtually none of their own money. I bet their listing agent still smiled all the way to the bank though.

The bottom line here is that people aren't just losing money on bad housing investments in Las Vegas and Miami and Phoenix and Southern California, but also on vacation homes at Deep Creek Lake. I know the real estate blogs are still trying to paint a rosy picture but I'm here to tell you the truth and sometimes the truth hurts. I did learn something though, next time I want to buy a house I know of at least one agent who I won't ask how much I should pay for any given house, unless of course I remember to consider that "competitive" to him means 25% too high for me. Buyer beware.

Don't forget to check back to Dan's Deep Creek Blog for future updates.