There is *nobody* that must sell. You can't pay for an operation - or anything else - by selling a house that is underwater. ...
That really is "worse news" than I thought - Every home owner must be "under water" if you are correct that "There is *nobody* that
must sell." (Not even to raise funds for mother´s medical bills, etc.)
I had the silly idea that many long time owners sell their mortgage-free home to get funds for world travel, retiring in Florida, etc. In fact I have read that 75% of home owners are NOT, under water and can sell to raise cash for their various needs. But you know more than I do. :shrug:
For example in prior post you said that I was wrong to suggest that by definition there was one buyer for every seller. You falsely noted that my "one buyer" was a home owner and that my "one seller" was a guy with new cash, or at least a cleared mortgage, not a seller.
What you don´t seem to understand is that in the real world there are sales contracts, which when signed make this one buyer & one seller relationship. It typically is more than a month after the sales agreement is signed before the buyer becomes a home owner.
That is because, with very rare exceptions, there are conditions in the sales agreement that take time to resolve. For example, almost always the buyer does not need to buy / go to settlement if no bank will give him a mortgage at X % or less.
Quite commonly one of the buyer´s conditions is that the house he already owns must sell (go thru settlement) first for at least D dollars. This sets up a chain that can take some years to terminate in the buyer becoming a home owner.
My Lab Tech at APL was a licensed real estate agent. He got leads from his friend (brother?) who drove a heating oil delivery truck. – When oil heated home owner just starts to think he may sell, first thing he does is to cancel the automatic oil delivery contract. (Wants his 600 gallon oil tank near empty, not full.)
With 40 hour work week, kids, church, etc. he had no time for “cold contact” real estate, showing dozens of houses to many who just enjoy looking, etc. but did often with only an hour lost become the “listing agent” for those who had stopped the automatic oil delivery.
Reason I tell this, is one day he took me out to lunch. Finally, after several years buyer #4 in a chain became a home owner, which then made buyer #3 a home homer, which made buyer #2 become a home owner, so his listing went to settlement – I.e. buyer #1 became a home owner. He had also listed the house buyer #3 bought, so got two listing agent´s 3% (6% total) in commissions after about three years of waiting for them. He rarely sold any homes, as lacked time to do so, but that chain gave him a pay day almost half is APL salary and he wanted to celebrate.
Also we were friends and one of his few sales was to me (16 acres of wood land near just being constructed I-95. - Part I bought was "I-95 excess" with no one actively trying to sell.) Some years earlier I had asked him to keep his eye open for wooded lot with stream when he looked at new listings and read real estate legal notices. Thus, my free lunch was in some part a thank you for that rare sales communion.
Correcting two of your errors is all I have time for now so did not read much of your post.
PS my first owned "townhouse" in a group of 42 (seven buildings) had had three prior sales contracts on it, but no settlement. Most of my neighbors had wanted to buy it as it was end unit of line of buildings with woods on back and long side of unit. (But when they were buying, it was already "sold.") Some were even hostile to me as I got it later for $5000 less than they paid earlier for their unit. It was the last of 42 to sell and developer was based in Virgina, so did not keep an agent on the developement any longer for just one unit, more than 100 miles from the office.
I knew he badly wanted to sell so wrote the front page of the sales contract myself - A firm offer to buy with no conditions in it*, if my $5000 less than asked offer was accpted by 5PM on (date) about 5 days later, and offer to buy it was void after that time, but a second offer to buy another devleoper´s unit became valid. I was going to be a buyer of some Bryant Woods townhouse with a week - I just did not know which.**
Unit is in "May Wind Court" and one of the first built in Columbia MD - There were no more built by that VA developer in all of Columba as for some strange reason,
, he turned sour on such distant projects. (I paid less than $30,000 for the best of all end units! - two side windows looking out on woods, where the main Columbia planner, Mort Hopenfield, had built his very expensive barely visible home in several acres of woods.)
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* I paid cash, but did have right to delay settlement (for up to 3 months, as I recall) to sell some stocks, etc. raising that cash. - I am very frugal, had no need of a house and its expenses so I rented for about 6 years after getting my Physics Ph.D. before buying with at least half my salary invested each month.
** I wanted to live in Columbia, less than 5 minutes drive from APL, for the good new schools*** my daughter would soon enter. I was one of the "pioneers" (first 1000 to buy) when Columbia was only the neighborhood called "Bryant Woods." None of the other neighborhoods of the village of "wild Lake" yet existed and the other six villages were not even on the drawing boards!
*** Rouse, developer of Columbia built them, very modern, as center of each neighbohood an gave them to Howard County. Half of elementary kids don´t need to cross any street, which is a large loop around the elementary school. Half cross only that strictly residential road. For these gifts and other consdierations, including free "turn key equipted fire stations," water towers, etc. he got a very free hand with the zoning - Columbia is a special "new town zone" Rouse wrote.
