Torn between holding out for fair market value or selling cheaply just to be rid of things

debodun

debodun

SF VIP
Location
way upstate in New York, USA
Whether it's the house I inherited or a fine item of salable merchandise left to me, I am always in a quandary about pricing. I could research things until Tahiti froze over, but here in upstate NY, it seems nobody wants to pay a fair market value for ANYTHING. I've talked to several realtors about the house (10 room Victorian, 2500 sq ft - see photo) and a consensus of opinion is that I couldn't expect to get anywhere near its assessed value of $167,000.

I have also been trying to sell some of the antiques I've been left without much success. The market is so bad here that almost all the antique shops around here have gone belly-up in the last 5 years. Even the Salvation Army won't take anything because they aren't selling and don't have room for more merchandise. I sent some fine items of vintage glassware to a local consignment shop last fall and not one piece sold. I just hate the thought of trashing things when I know how much my mother paid for for her collections. It seems SOMEONE would be interested. Since I am ANXIOUS but not DESPERATE to sell things, should I undersell or stand firm with prices I think are fair? What's with people these days and their money?

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I've been faced with that problem a lot lately. Part of my solution was to given a bunch of very valuable antiques to my son and let him put the energy into getting the most out of it. He is gay and has a access to the gay community which has a lot of disposable money and the aesthetic appreciation for really nice things. With the house I'm selling I'm willing to sell cheaply so as not to prolong my stay in this community.
 
We're having the same problem with my boyfriend's mother's house. She's gone off to live with another son and the house has been on the market for a few months now. That's her only asset and the money from its sale is going to be needed if she needs to enter a nursing home or assisted living. We've dropped the price twice and not one bid. It's very competitively priced for the neighborhood and the realtor is aggressive. Nothing much is selling. We don't want to give it away but it's just sitting there costing money. She insists we not sell it for less than what she thinks it is worth (which is unrealistic), but luckily my boyfriend has power of attorney and can sell if for whatever he decides.

As for antiques.....sheesh, what a nightmare. My mother gave me all her antique furniture and I used the pieces for years. When I sold my house and moved in with my boyfriend, I needed to get rid of all the big bulky oak antiques, including a beautiful pump organ. Nobody else in the family wanted them. NOBODY wanted them. I talked to a pump organ collector in Georgia who has what he calls an "orphanage" in his barn. He has over 160 pump organs and can't even give them away. I figured out that the young folks don't want antiques, people my age are downsizing and trying to get rid of them and anyone who does like antiques already has all they want. It's a lost cause.
 

Fair market value???? Seems to me that if you can't sell the stuff, that tells you what the market value is. A big fat zero. Personally, I'm into selling stuff off cheap because it's better than taking it to a thrift store and leaving it on their doorstep for nothing. Unfortunately, my husband likes to hand his hat on the phrase, 'do you know what I paid for that????' So I just back off and let him deal with it.

For my part, I would look at it like this: if I sell it cheap, maybe the guy I sell it to has a real need but can't afford it new.....so I've done a good turn for someone else. And if I give it away or drop it off at the thrift store, I'm helping someone who probably has a lower income than I do and I've done a good turn for someone else. Either way I win because I've emptied a spot on the shelf, I won't have to re-store it or move it ever again and I'm more interested in lightening my life these days anyway and I've maybe done someone a good turn.

Of course, there is an exception to that philosophy and that's my house because I'd still need to live somewhere when we sell this place and the next guy might not be so gracious to me when I go to buy a little apartment.
 
This has to be so hard on you and I'm sorry. The house looks nice on the outside but of coarse it's the inside that matters most.

I don't know if you are up to selling on Etsy or ebay but stuff seems to sell there.

Right now I've just turned 55 and I'm looking for a home in an adult mobile park. I seem to be the opposite. Nothing nicer and newer for sale.

I was watching the news with those prison escapees. Everything looked so lush and green in the area.
 
I collected Cambridge (Ohio) Glass at one time. In the last 8 years the prices have been deteriorating. When I have asked, "What's going on?", The answer that I get most often is that antique collectors are becoming just like their merchandise, Antiques. It seems that the generations behind us have no real desire to collect such things anymore. All this means to me is that I get to keep my beautiful glassware and enjoy it for myself.
 
I'm facing the same issue with my other house. I have had it on the market for 15 months.. but I intentionally priced it very high as I wasn't in a real hurry to sell, and my feeling was, who knows? Someone just may buy it. I reduced the price by 10 grand in March.. I have had one offer, but it was really low ball. I will definitely have to have that thing sold before I retire in 18 months.. so I'm looking to reduce the price even more by the fall. I will probably take a small loss, but will be happy to have it off my hands.

PS... The St Joseph statue does NOT work.
 
Sorry to say that with the start of Freecycle, no one wants to pay for anything. When my sister moved, a good portion of the furniture she couldn't take with her got put out on the curb and of course gone the next morning. I gave up on the thought of trying to sell my things . . . have just been putting them up on Freecycle just to get rid of the stuff, but then my things are not antiques.
 
The housing market is a LONG WAY from the heady days of 10 years ago...when prices were rising almost overnight. So many people, who thought that housing was a good investment, got badly burned, that the housing market will probably remain stagnant for many years. Plus, with stagnant wages, etc., fewer young people are able to afford to spend much on housing, so that will also keep the market depressed.

Insofar as the "extras" that most of us have laying around....we went through our "stuff" this Winter, and I have a good stack of things in the basement...which I am selling on EBAY. I put up one or two items a week, and have had fairly good luck getting a fair price for these things we no longer want/need. When I get down to the bigger stuff, I will just load it up and take it to a local auction house. Whatever I get for this stuff is certainly better than just letting it gather dust.
 
Don M is right. selling houses especially in the current economic climate will be difficult.You can hold out for a while and hope for an economic upturn or sell at a loss, but if the house is inherited, then it's all profit anyway.Antiques I would hold onto until better times.
 
I actually come out better taking a loss on my 2nd home as I will not have capital gain to pay and can actually use my purchase price as my cash basis and claim the new roof plus the loss.
 
My granddaughter just sold their house, it had been on the market one week, the very first people that looked at it bought it, now they are panicking....they were not quiet ready to move so fast. They will eventually build out here near me, I'm looking forward to having them out here.....anyway, real estate here in East Texas' small town is booming, people moving out of Dallas area.
 
Houses in my neighborhood sell quickly. A house down the street sold in 9 days for $30,000 more than the sellers were asking.
 
Yes Glinda, I'm noticing in my area of California things are selling rather quickly. It did take my step-dad 10 months to sell his well priced nice mobile in a good adult park. But it finally sold. I thought he would have little trouble selling it quickly. It is in a more rural area of northern california. At least it's all done now.

I even looked at condos (online) in my area and prices have gone up a lot in 5 years. I'll just keep holding out for a nice mobile for me.
 
Kitties said:
Yes Glinda, I'm noticing in my area of California things are selling rather quickly. It did take my step-dad 10 months to sell his well priced nice mobile in a good adult park. But it finally sold. I thought he would have little trouble selling it quickly. It is in a more rural area of northern california. At least it's all done now.

I even looked at condos (online) in my area and prices have gone up a lot in 5 years. I'll just keep holding out for a nice mobile for me.
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Unless there's been a major change in California you cannot get a mortgage on a mobile home as they are not real estate but rather personal property. THAT is very likely the reason your step dad's took awhile to sell.
 
Keep your fingers crossed......we may have a buyer for the boyfriend's mom's house. The buyer wants a very fast closing and says he doesn't want to nit-pick about details. Not offering quite what we'd like, but then we haven't even had a bite in months. His offer has been accepted; now we're waiting for the inspection, which should pass.
 
When that house was built,upstate NY was the center of industrial progress in the US with jobs to spare. Nowadays not so much.
That is a fantasy house and would take very deep pockets to support it and there just ain't that many in that area.
Kodak, Xerox, Bausch And Lomb,, New Process gear, Carrier, Champion, International Harvester, American Can, IBM, Morse Chain, Fisher body and hundreds of others are gone, and the few that are left are just shadows of their former selves. With twelve dollars per hour being considered a decent wage in that area where are you going to find someone that can afford to support that dinosaur?
 
I bet if you were to rent a big truck and load ALL your antiques and have them sent to a California Large antique facility in Los Angeles or San Francisco Bay Area you could get a good price for SOME of your antiques. Your Victorian home is another matter. Your antiques could be quite different than the antiques available in California shops, and therefore appealing.
 
With houses, I think the old "Location, location, location" thing is still the main factor. That house looks lovely; in California, or the suburbs surrounding New York or Washington, DC, it would be worth over a million. Pricing has to be realistic, based on what other comparable houses are selling for in the same area. As someone else has pointed out, that is the "fair market value."

As for antiques, I think what's happened is that all the stuff has multiplied. Each generation passes along their treasures to the next, and then that generation has a lot of their parents' stuff to deal with, along with their own. The next generation will get even more stuff handed down. And so on.

Recently, I went to one of those antiques malls, in a pretty affluent area. I asked if they would be interested in several household antiques I had no room for, as I was downsizing. I was told that nobody is buying; everybody wants to sell!

I've also noticed that young people seem to be much more mobile and live differently than we did. Most of them are in no hurry to buy homes; they travel light and can pack up all their worldly goods and move at a moment's notice. This presents a problem to their parents and grandparents, who were hoping to give them some of their stuff.

With a changing economy, this might change. But for the moment, it looks like the only option is to sell cheap.
 
I had quite a bit of small vintage/antique items I was trying to get rid of via eBay and yard sales and nothing was selling for much at all. My youngest child (40 years old) said to me "Mom, Rather than sell the stuff cheap, why doesn't you just put it in your trunks and let your kids or grandkids sell it in 20 or 30 years for a good price?" So that's what I have done. The other day my husband commented on the 3 or 4 trunks at one end of his shop and I told him, "Don't worry honey, they'll be gone in 30 years." :)
 
Good idea Linda, by then people will be eager to get their hands on such great quality treasures.
 

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