In article ,
"SteveBell" wrote:

Smitty Two wrote:

In article ,
"SteveBell" wrote:

snip


My opinion as well. That same brother-in-law has been trying to sell
his condo for several years. Lenders don't want to give anyone a
mortgage to buy it, because the ratio of renters to resident owners
is too high. He keeps it rented out enough to cover the mortgage,
usually.

If he's been trying to sell it for years, then there's only one valid
reason that it hasn't sold. The damn price is too high. Which means,
of course, that he hasn't really been trying to sell it at all.

Lots of people have tried to buy it, but they can never get a mortgage.
Mortgage companies require that the renter/resident-owner ratio be very
high, or they won't issue a mortgage at all. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but I seem to recall that it has to be in the 0.50 - 0.75
range.

There was a condo building boom/fad in Dallas in the 70s and 80s, so
condos are plentiful. Most of them are rented, I assume because people
figured out that they get the disadvantages of living in an apartment
combined with the disadvantages of owning a house, with the
disadvantages of a homeowners association piled on top. Can you tell
I'd never live in a condo? :-)

He could do owner financing or drop the price to nothing, but what
would be the point? The property is paying its own way, and he gets
some income. He's just waiting around for someone who can do their own
financing.

Nothing wrong with keeping it, especially if he's got a zero or positive
cash flow. But I'm skeptical about the mortgage rationale. It's an easy
excuse for a buyer to change his mind. Things are worth what people can
and will pay for them. If he won't drop the price to one at which it
will sell, obstacles be damned, then he's asking more than the market
will bear. So he could just acknowledge that this isn't the right time
to sell.

I'm buying an investment house with my g.f. in another city, where
prices spiked far higher and crashed far more steeply than most, due to
local conditions. Our realtor is saying that finally, things are
starting to sell. Well, duh. Prices are 30% of what they were 2 yrs.
ago, on a par with what they were 4 yrs. ago, which is what they're
"worth" according to the inviolable law of supply and demand.

It took a while for the banks, who own most of what's on the market
there, to stop fooling themselves about recouping any reasonable
percentage of their money and just cut the prices to whatever it took to
sell. Are mortgages hard to get? Yep. And that reduces the pool of
prospective buyers, which reduces the prices even more. That's the ugly
reality of it, for those on the losing end of the bargain.