Wow, the house is almost sold!

Believe it or not, our home for the past 13 years which we put on the market at the beginning of the month may soon belong to a new owner in early April (as long as nothing kills the offered deal before then.) Since we did not allow anyone to even see the house until Feb 8th (the first Open House) that means it sold in less than 3 weeks since the initial showing. Many people would say we sold too low, but guess what? Our sales price is still 47% higher than what we paid in 1996 which amounts to a 3% annual increase. The sky high prices of the 2003 to 2006 time period are still clouding the minds of people to house prices. Sure, we put in quite a bit more money over the years into the house in maintenance and improvements, but we also received 13 years of enjoyable living in the house as well. We are lucky we never had a huge loan on the house and we did not refinance when home values were high to a 100% LTV loan. And once we receive the proceeds from the sale, much of it will go to pay down and refinance the loan on our other house so our LTV on our new house will be under 50% with an interest rate hopefully around 5% (our final monthly payment should be under 20% of our monthly income.) We should definitely qualify for a loan like that, and it is nothing even close to the "sub-prime" loans that caused this big mess. If we do not get approved to refinance, I cannot imagine who could!

And, yes, our buyer is getting a great deal, and our lower priced sale will hurt other people in our area trying to sell when prospective buyers find out our final contract sales price. Other sellers in our area may need a higher price to pay off their large 2005 refinanced loan, but that is their mistake for over leveraging their properties. I am also guessing that our buyer is indeed a first time home buyer earning less than $75,000/yr so he should be eligible to receive the $8,000 federal tax credit. Since we are closing before April 15, he can even claim his credit on his 2008 taxes and receive the credit this year. Good for him! So the stimulus package helped him a lot, helped us sell our house (so we can lower our monthly payment and spend more of our earnings on other things besides interest), helped pay two realtors, various home inspectors, title companies, etc. So the stimulus package is helping real people right now!