A House in Amissville

We're going to dive down to ground level today to take a look at the history of one house that recently sold in Amissville.

This home sold on December 27, 2007 after 574 days on the market.

This is a lovely home. I know because I showed it to several potential buyers. It sits in Rappahannock County on 51 acres with a pond. As someone who loves to cook, I can tell you that the kitchen is amazing! It has 5 bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths and a fully finished basement.

There is also a detached 3-car garage/shop with an apartment.

This home was built by a builder for his own family in 2000.

The home was listed for sale on May 4, 2006 for $2,275,000. The price was dropped three times. The final price drop was in November of 2007 when the price went to $995,000.

The final sales price was $850,000. That's 37% of it's original sales price. It's 85% of the final listing price. Any way you look a this, it's an incredible deal!

To give you a frame of reference, there are currently four parcels of land of approximately the same size for sale in Rappahannock County. The prices range from $599,000 to $1,348,500. This is for unimproved land!

This could create problems for future sales if it's used as a comparable. Rappahannock has been a little more sheltered from dramatic price declines. At least for the higher end properties, that may no longer be true.

It's also interesting to note that the buyer paid cash for the property.

There are some bargains out there! And cash provides a lot of negotiating leverage.

RE: A House in Amissville

RE: A House in Amissville

Kirk,

Excellent question! (And, I may need to do a blog post on this topic!)

The leverage comes from two main points. First of all, if a contract falls apart, well over 95% of the time it's related to the buyer's loan. No loan and the likelihood of the deal closing goes, way, way up. I'll expand on this in more detail when I do the blog post.

Secondly, settlement typically happens much faster with cash. The normal interval for a settlement in this area right now is around 30 days. That thirty days is basically for the lender to get everything done, including appraisal, survey, get through underwriting, etc. Cash settlements have been done in as little as 24 hours.

Thanks for asking!

RE: A House in Amissville

This house is barely worth $500K in this market. AND - it is UGLY! When the owners subdivide to recover their loss - THEY BECOME DEVELOPERS! This is how filth breeds.

The buying and developing of land is purely capitalist.

RE: A House in Amissville

RE: A House in Amissville

"Any way you look a this, it's an incredible deal!'

Okay then, I have a 1996 Ford Taurus for sale for 100,000$, I'll let you have it for $2,000, thats 98% off the orignal asking price...any way you look at this, it's an incredible deal!

When you set any asking price you want, ANY discount does not always lead to a deal...sorry I don't drink the REA kool-aid, so I am not affected by such propaganda speak.

RE: A House in Amissville

Clearly we have differing opinions on this. Estimates of future prices are always a guess based on what you believe the market will do in a specific location. Since none of us know that for sure, I'll take my guess for now that this is a heck of a deal!
But you're all entitled to your own opinions!

RE: A House in Amissville

Considering that a real estate 'broker' does not even require a high school education and that people such as yourself share the responsability for the economic mess we are in...your opinion is worth very very little, and may actually have negative worth, we lose money every time we listen to you.

RE: A House in Amissville

RE: A House in Amissville

RE: A House in Amissville

I believe the house would have sold for considerably more had the price been dropped a lot sooner. Chasing the market down usually turns out to be a bad idea!

While there may have been some decorating choices that dissuaded some buyers, I believe that the biggest reason it took so long to sell was price.

Other factors may have been credit availability and less demand for very large homes.

RE: A House in Amissville

RE: A House in Amissville

You're certainly right about the fact that there are no jobs in Amissville to support such a house. But then, almost no one who lives in Amissville or Rappahannock County or, for that matter Fauquier County work near their home.

And, a larger and larger percentage of the people buying homes in Rappahannock County are weekenders only. Given the fact that this home was purchased with cash I'd suspect that this may be the case here as well. If you can purchase this home with cash there's a fair chance you don't have to work for a living!