Real Estate Investing

Several years ago, a colleague who is now retired co-listed a home in Nashville that was haunted.  It was not “supposedly” haunted … it had ghosts, plain and simple.  The home seller was a Civil War buff who had gone to a reenactment with a group of friends.  The reenactment was near an old plantation house and cemetery that were haunted.  There were tales both of laughter from children and images of adults that would appear in windows.  The cemetery was full of ghosts wearing mostly confederate uniforms.

After the reenactment, the group of friends sat on the back of a pick up truck drinking… watching for the ghosts to come out as the skies grew dark.  They waited a couple of hours and decided to call it a night before their wives came looking for them.  But as the brave seller was about to get in his cab, he shouted a challenge to the spirits, “If anyone wants to come home with me, hop in the back of the truck!”   The friends just cackled with laughter and punched him in the arm jovially.  It was a fun night and the memory of it wouldn’t fade quickly.

As it turns out, it didn’t fade at all because within two nights of his return home, mysterious things began happening at his house.  Toys that belonged to his grandchildren would be found on the floor of the playroom in the morning - toys that had been on a shelf the night before.  The seller ran a business out of his house and often times when he was on the phone with a client, he’d hear a child giggling.   Once he heard a toddler crying and he ended his call to see what was going on.  He never did find anyone.

The young spirits weren’t too bad, but an older soul would sit in the rocking chair for two hours every night.  At precisely 8:20 p.m., the rocking motion would begin. At 10:20 p.m. - after the local weather went off - the seller would say, “It’s time to go to bed.” and the chair would stop.

The house went on the market for six months and it was advertised as being haunted.  But no one was interested in buying a house with ghosts.  Why?  According to Curbed Hamptons,

It seems the paranormal don’t sell houses all that well, particularly in a luxury market, so on the surface, the Hamptons is utterly devoid of spirits. A 1991 court ruling in Upstate New York scared many storytellers, when a $650,000 house sale fell through after the seller didn’t reveal the hauntedness of her house. A $32,500 deposit had to be returned after it was proven that the seller had relayed ghost stories to the local newspaper and Reader’s Digest, but not to the freaked out buyer. 

So next time you think about inviting a ghost home with you, be careful.  You might not be able to find a buyer until after the ghostbusters come in to rid your house of unwanted, invisible, cold guests.

Photo by my former colleague of the house that really WAS haunted.

The U.S. Senate has approved an extension on the home buyer tax credit - and altered it so more than first-time buyers will be eligible.  According to MSNBC,

Senators agreed to extend the existing tax credit for first-time homebuyers while offering a reduced credit of up to $6,500 to repeat buyers who have owned their current homes for at least five years, said Regan Lachapelle, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The tax credits would be available to homebuyers who sign sales agreements by the end of April. They would have until the end of June to close on their new homes…

I couldn’t find more sources to confirm this online, so realize there are a lot of unanswered questions:

1. When is the final vote?
2. What does the House say?
3. Does the President have to approve the measure?
4. Who will now be qualified?

For me the exciting part isn’t the extension itself, it’s expanding it so other people are qualified to buy.  If my home was “parade ready” for example, it could be the boost I’d need to downsize - something I’ve been talking about for some time with my family.

Meanwhile, stocks tumbled today on the news that housing sales numbers were down.  Again, reflecting my own area that wasn’t ravaged by the bad market like some areas, it’s been a very bad year. Here’s what CNN Money.com said,

Stocks tumbled Wednesday, led by the tech-fueled Nasdaq, as a weaker-than-expected new home sales report added to questions about the strength of the economic recovery.

Let’s not get too comfortable at the notion of a quick recovery for the economy, though.  I was all Polly Sunshine about two years ago, but now… not so much.  However, it doesn’t mean that  now is not a good time to buy … it’s a GREAT time for people to get great prices on homes, good mortgage interest rates, and sellers willing to help out on closing costs.