Selling my house

Opps. I just realised that I never blogged about the sale of my Canberra house.

A few months ago I started thinking about selling my house. Several reasons. First, after one of my investments went bad my passive income has shrunk. To keep travelling I needed to shift some of my “capital-growth” investments into “passive-income” investments… and that meant selling a house. Second, the house needed some repairs, which were expensive. Ironically, I could only afford to fix the house if I sold it. Third, while I’m not worried about the housing market in Australia, I wanted to take a bit of money out of property for a year, and in the future concentrate on the s/e Qld growth corridor. Forth, interest rates were starting to bite. I think they’ll come down again soon and then I’ll buy another place in Queensland.

So I spoke to my property manager and also the tennant about selling the house. The real estate agent estimated that he could get about $320k-$330k. The tennant wanted to buy, but couldn’t afford it now. However, his neighbour was interested and would let the tennants (a very nice family) stay at the house. But he only offered $290k.

I decided that I would be willing to take $310k as a lowest price from the neighbour, and otherwise put the house on the market. The rationale for the lower price was (1) I would save a bit on real estate fees; and (2) I liked the tennants and was worried about wherre they would go next. But I shouldn’t have mentioned $310k to the neighbour because he thought it was a first price in a bargaining process. After $290k, he went to $300k as a final price. Then slowly crept to $305k as the absolute last road. And finally… he came to $310k. So the house is now sold. Hamdullah (praise allah).

The arrangement was made when I was in Cambodia. A month later… the sale is still waiting on the bloody lawyers to write up the contract. Hopefully things will be worked out in the coming week, insh’allah, and then I should have some money to play with soon.