Birmingham Real Estate Market?

Since we are selling our home, many of you have asked how the "market" is here in Birmingham. Well, we did consult with a Realtor prior to making our final decision and she insured us that she had recently seen an increase in her sales. Of course, there are no guarantees when it comes to selling a home. The bottom line is the right person just has to come see your home and fall in love with it and be willing to pay your price. No one has a crystal ball when it comes to this subject. We personally have experienced both easy and difficult situations when selling. Our home in Kansas was our first home and we sold it within 1 month of being on the market in May/June 2000! That was really great. Then we found ourselves in need of selling once again when we lived in Bristol VA. We were really worried because we had one of the largest homes in the neighborhood with a big price tag! Once again, we were blessed and our home actually sold within 2 weeks the week of Christmas 2002! So we were off to purchase our third home in New Palestine IN! We lived there for 4-1/2 years and then put that house on the market in May/June 2007, and we were not so fortunate with this one. We had an offer within a couple of weeks that was as they say, "too good to be true", and it was! Even though we were told that they were "pre-approved", that was not entirely true. Needless to say, the sale fell through and we were very disappointed. The For Sale sign continued to decorate our yard and drag on and on. We decided to fire our Realtor and hire a new one in November. Once again we were excited by an offer, not exactly what we had hoped for, but an offer none the less. So we proceeded and this became quite the roller coaster! The buyer wanted to be anonymous? What is that all about? Anyway, we just proceeded and "he" turned out to be a royal pain in the neck! He was supposedly paying cash, NOT! Ended up that he wanted to be anonymous because he was bankrupt, the home he was currently living in was under foreclosure and he was trying to buy our house through his corporation! He was unable to get the funds from his corporation, so the deal all fell through. Our Realtor had not managed to get the proper paperwork signed in order for our relocation company to take over and get this all out of our hands or to ensure that we would receive the earnest money that had been promised! It was all a big fiasco and very frustrating. Back to the drawing board. We finally received an offer in May 2008, yes, almost 1 year of paying bills on two houses. OUCH. We were just relieved to finally be out from under that expense. So then in January 2009 we get to do this all over again. As I said, our Realtor assures us that the housing market is not too bad here and she seems to think that our house is priced right and perfect. Well, she is right about one thing, our house is perfectly clean and receives many compliments whenever we have a showing, but we have not received any offers yet. Oh well, it has only been 1-1/2 months, so I guess we should just stay calm and realize that everything is all in God's timing and not ours.

While surfing the website of our neighborhood, I found this article that was a bit encouraging although our house is not a new construction inventory house for Eddleman. It is however new and we have lived in it for less than two years, so hopefully our Realtor will be able to market it really well and bring just the right buyer. If not, we have also put it on the market for Lease. Got to keep all the bases covered.