We Sold our Townhouse - House #3!

We finally closed on the townhouse my wife bought before we were married. We had moved into House #4 in December 2008 and had family living in the townhouse (House #3) until the last week of August. We then put the townhouse on the market in September.

Our net proceeds from closing were ~$26,000.

Timeline of Selling our Townhouse
Early August - Agreed to put house on market in early September
8/15-8/21 - Interviewed real estate agents
8/24 - Selected Real Estate Agent with 5% commision
8/25 - The townhouse was vacated and cleaned
9/1 - Signed real estate agent paperwork
9/3 - hired painter to touch up interior (~$520)
9/9 - House was listed on MLS $128,500
9/27 - Reduced price to $124,900 after only 2 showings in <3 weeks
10/8 - Wife and I discussed lowering house price again to ensure house would sell before tax credit expired as we didn't think it would sell till Spring otherwise.
10/10 - Showing #6
10/11 - Received offer for $120,000 with $4,000 in closing
10/12 - We countered @ $125,000 with $2,500 in closing; buyer counterd at $124,000 with $3,500 in closing
10/13 - We countered @ $124,500 with $3,500 in closing, buyer accepted
11/20 - Closing; deed transferred, proceeds wired - yeah!!

Related in Real Estate:

No Closing Cost Loan Example (Nov 29, 2012) I've gotten multiple requests to clarify the recent no closing cost refinance loan I just completed. Its a bit of a vague term and could be done different ways, but the end result is that there are no out of...

3.5% 30 Year Fixed No Closing Cost Refinance (Nov 27, 2012) We finally closed this week on our 3.5% 30 year fixed refinance with no closing costs (no closing costs = a credit from lender/broker large enough to offset refinance costs). It took us over 2 months (67 days from initial...

Appraisal Appeal Unsuccessful (Nov 05, 2012) Not much of a surprise, the appraiser dug in and didn't budge after we submitted our appraisal appeal: Our more favorable comparables were based on county property records. Interestingly the appraiser indicated the MLS data is generally considered more accurate...

Comments (4)

Remind what the plans were with the proceeds of house 3?

Posted by danielle | December 1, 2009 10:08 AM

Hey 2million,

Nice job. What are you planning on doing with the cash?

Oh, BTW, one thing I like about your guys blog is you're richer than most other PF bloggers out there, so I feel your posts are worth more to read.

Posted by James | December 1, 2009 1:11 PM

What was your actual return on this house investment. Meaning, you bought the house for $104,000 in 2005, correct? And then you sold it for $124,500 now. So your gross profit was about $20,000, correct? But then after you subtract the costs your paid for closing ($3,500) plus the yearly property tax ($2000?) plus the maintenance costs (?) plus the original broker costs when you bought it, is the net profit then really more like $10,000? Then if you factor in inflation, would it be closer to $7500? Just curious.

Posted by Steve | December 1, 2009 4:19 PM

There aren't really proceeds from this sale. Our intention was to sell this house when we bought house #4 but its been delayed till now for a variety of reasons.

I say their aren't really proceeds because the equity in house #3 after sale expenses was just emergency funds that we put into the mortgage to cancel PMI and earn a higher rate of return.

Posted by 2million | December 15, 2009 4:57 PM