u/General_Equivalent45

Hi everyone,

I'm in a dilemma. I bought a house in Seattle 2 years ago but am moving back to California due to family health and career. I put 50k in for down payment and mortgage rate is 6.25%. With that being said I was paying 4300 monthly including insurance and taxes. Comparatively, houses similar to mine are being rented out for around 3k-3.5k. So when I do the math, compared to renting, I paid an extra 70k.

Due to the market being not great in Washington at the moment, if I were to sell my house, after paying agent fees I'd likely have to pay 4k out of pocket.

If I rent out my house using a property manager that my neighbors are using, after estimating possible vacancy and maintenance fees, I'd be looking at a negative cash flow of around 1700 to 2000 a month. I can definitely afford this with my income. However, I am aware that this would be at the cost of putting that money into stocks or other investments.

Should I take the 74k loss and sell my house now, or should I just rent it out to see if the housing market gets better? What if I plan to come back for retirement one day?

My home is listed north of Seattle in the Puget Sound region, and real estate here is typically pretty hot. But the day my house listed 7 weeks ago, everything fell off a cliff. Our price was very reasonable and supported by plenty of comps, but we've still lowered the price by nearly $100K already to get offers coming in.

Bupkis. Zilch.

I have had over a hundred buyers walk through this house in open houses and private showings, more than I ever had for any house I've owned. We get solid, positive feedback, and then almost every buyer says the same thing. "Yeah, I'm not ready to commit, just looking."

I'm not young, so I've been through this a few times, and never have I seen this many buyers collectively decide to do nothing. Is anyone else seeing this? How do you even get a realtor to take you to a private showing if you don't have a preapproval from a bank and the readiness to sign a contract that same day? Is this a new thing?

Pardon my panicked tones, but I'm getting pretty desperate to move out. My family has already moved, and I stayed behind to sell the house. I never expected to be here this long, and I'm starting to wonder if it would sell even if we cut the price in half (which I clearly cannot do, I have my own bills to pay).

For reference, my home is listed for just shy of $1.2M. In this area, there are currently 82 homes listed between $1.0M and $1.5M, and only 3 went pending last week. Some are dropping out of the market altogether and opting to rent them out.

“This entire crisis starts with one simple equation:

Home prices relative to incomes are the worst we’ve seen in modern history.

Buyers aren’t sitting out because they don’t want homes. They’re sitting out because they can’t buy them under today’s rate-and-price combo.”

Home prices were falling faster in Seattle than any other major U.S. metro in early spring, as the Pacific Northwest city displaced Denver as the nation’s weakest housing market.