If you lived, say, on a hill in downtown Seattle, would you need flood insurance? That seems like a silly question, but the answer might be yes! A onetime boss of mine owned a multimillion dollar house in Seattle that was well above sea level. However, one extremely rainy month his house slid down the hill and collided head on with his neighbor’s house. None of this was covered by insurance as the damage was caused by the movement of water.
A coworker asked me an interesting question: if he were to receive an inheritance equal in amount to the outstanding balance on his mortgage, should he use it to pay off his mortgage? My advice was no, unless he has a mortgage with a high interest rate, which surprised him.
Recent common wisdom is that only the foolish or the desperate would buy a house — while the answer a year ago was heck, yes, buy one! Neither answer is very helpful, so it might be worthwhile to lay all the cards on the table and come up with some rational reasons for deciding whether to buy a house or not.
My wife had to sell the house she kept for her mom in one of the toughest real estate markets in the nation. We learned through experience several techniques to sell a house in a buyer’s market:
