No offers on house yet

[Himanshu Pagey]

Hello All, 

We moved from Atlanta to Bay area and our house is Atlanta is on market for approx 55 days (Feb 10th - now) with no offers. It's a SFH (built in 1996) in a good school district with 75% finished basement. We bought it in Feb 2015 and are going to move to west coast. We realized that our house has three big negative points (confirmed by feedback sent by potentials buyers) that we kind of overlooked when buying it. It was our first house purchase.

1. Steep driveway 

2. Small Kitchen 

3. No bedroom on main 

We are thinking of renting it out if we don't receive any offers in next month or so. The only issue is we are going to be on west coast. How practical is it to rent out a property which is not driving distance? My spouse doesn't want the headache of managing a remote property (totally valid point) and is inclined towards selling the property 10-30k (including commissions and all) below the price we paid for. Needed your valuable opinions on this. 

We have reduced the price once and will do it again next week. This will be final price reduction. 

[Chris T.]

welcome to BP @Himanshu Pagey

The right price solves everything. And you cannot change any of the 3 negatives without spending a lot of money. 

There're lots of out of state investors. The key thing is to find the right management company, who has experience in your area, and can communicate well with you. 

Since you've at least 1 month in your current house, I would start interviewing different management companies. So that if you do not find a reasonable offer to sell, you can at least move on to plan B. 

But before you rent, run the rental numbers to see if it's acceptable to both of you. Sometimes, it's better to sell at a loss; if you can find better returns somewhere else.