"amdx" wrote in message ...

On 8/15/2013 4:20 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:


wrote in message
...


I could have sold my house for $750k but I was never confused that
it
was really worth that much.

----------------------------

We bought a house in Florida in November, 2001 for $465K.
Sold it in November, 2005 for $1M minus $10K as an adjustment for
some
minor roof damage from Hurricane Wilma.

A few months later the housing bubble burst.



Congrats, I'll bet that 10k was like a tiny pimple.

------------------------------

The whole deal with that house was bizarre.

When we bought the house I really didn't know much about home values
down there. I had just taken our boat down to Jupiter, FL from MA.
My wife flew down a couple of days later to see the marina where the
boat's slip was and see the general area. After a couple of days
living on the boat she found a realtor and arranged for him to show me
some houses in the area. She flew back to MA and I met with the
realtor the next week.

She had programmed the realtor well in terms of what she wanted. Had
to have a bit of land and provisions for having horses.

The realtor picked me up and told me he had 4 or 5 places for me to
look at. We had established a budget of a max of $400K. Whatever
we bought was to be a winter house and we'd be spending summers back
in our primary residence in MA.

The first place he took me to was the place we bought .... at $465K.
It had everything she wanted .... nice house, pool, horse paddocks, a
riding rink and a horse barn. I told the realtor it was perfect ...
we'll take it. He was a little shocked and told me he still had 4
other places to show me. So, we looked at all the other places, then
made a full price offer on the first one.

It turns out, it was being sold by Pratt and Whitney. They had just
transferred one of their executives who had lived there and had bought
the house from him as part of his transfer arrangements. The actual
market value of the house at the time was more like $600K, so we got
a good deal.

We had a great time there for the next three winters. But three
hurricanes and my wife's homesickness convinced us to sell it.

Selling it was even more weird. We had a friend we had met who was a
realtor. I figured we'd put it on the market at around the $600K
figure. She said we should ask more and suggested the $1M figure.
I thought she was nuts, but we weren't in a big hurry to sell, so we
agreed.

The first person who looked at it was a woman who had grown up in the
general area. She was also the mistress to some wealthy businessman
from Maryland. When I met her, she explained that she was "on call"
for him whenever he travelled and often flew all over the world to
meet up with him.

She had told him that she wanted a nice place of her own in Jupiter
and he told her to go find one and he'd buy it for her. (told you
this was weird).

So, he made a full price offer of a million for the place without ever
seeing it. Wilma hit between the offer and the closing, so the
realtor is the one who "suggested" a $10K reduction due to the minor
roof damage.

The guy flew down for the closing. He had a certified check for the
full sell price. He also brought his check book because he told me
he wasn't sure if there was anything else involved in the transaction.
He ended up buying a Kubota tractor we had and most of the furniture
that was in the house.

Everything was put in the girl's name.

I heard later that she broke off her relationship with the guy a few
months after the sale.