busy, busy...

 

I have been a little busy lately. After our two week vacation to Morocco my brother got married. His Bachelor the weekend before and the preparation for his wedding took quite some time, but it was worth it. The wedding (and his bachelors) were great! It was a day with family, friends and a great deal of warmth. Some pictures of my brother and his wife are posted on their weblog at www.cedenines.com.

 

Next to my brother's wedding we have also been very busy with buying our new home and selling our old one. There are some great insights to be learned from buying and selling a house, which is pretty complicated if you want to do it right. Buying a house entails a great deal of uncertainty. You have no idea how many other people also want the house and what a realistic price is in this rat race. In the rat race you also don't have a lot of time to minimize the risks involved. You basically see the house on average a little more than once, let alone the neighborhood and neighbors.

 

Furthermore the more risk you take, the more likely you are to win the race for your new House. You quickly forfeit the right to undo the agreement if you cannot come up with the financing (something we already checked before we entered the rat racing). The thing we didn’t forfeit was an enquiry into the structural integrity of the house. All things went well and we got the house. After this you have to arrange the financing (we only checked if we could afford the house beforehand). This is pretty complicated as stories can be pretty confusing and seem to conflict between the different mortgage supplier. Especially after the Dutch AFM (they monitor the Dutch banking system) issued a report that in investment mortgages (mortgages that are paid back by investing in stocks, bonds, etc) a large part of the fee was not invested but was used as an administrative fee. Quite a few consumers are trying to get their money back. Such an announcement is made to provide more clarity and more transparency for the buyers, but in the short run things gets even more confusing. The market has been shaken but the mist hasn’t cleared yet. The proper market adjustments haven’t been made, yet everybody is still trying to do business. Next action points are deciding what to and not to change/upgrade in the house. Something for the coming weeks.

 

At the same time we have been trying to sell our current house. In selling our house marketing steps in. In The Netherlands we have quite a few real-estate programs on tv, such as ‘tv makelaar’ (tv real estate agent). They tell people what to look at when buying a house, but also how to sell your house. Key tips: try to make it as empty (ie show how much room there is) as possible, remove all personal object, add some warmth by using flowers and focus on your pictures and description when selling. I think we did quite well, because it was online Friday and we had the first people who ‘popped by’ on Saturday. They had surpassed our real estate agent. These two people where looking for a house for their 22 year old daughter with two rooms. After checking the two rooms he asked me what the lowest price for our home was. Seeing as he was the first to come (or pop) by, I told him the asking price was the lowest price. He told me he would call my real estate agent on Monday. We’ll see if he does. I am also very eager to hear how well our house did on the first day(s). Hit it off in the beginning and the price will be highest. So let’s hope it goes well.

 

Next to marketing stepping into the market, The Rabobank has also stepped into the market by buying the challenger to the (almost monopolized) Dutch online real estate agent Funda.nl , called zoekallehuizen.nl. Zoekallehuizen.nl will give the Rabobank a position in the Dutch real estate market. How they will shake up this market is still to be seen. Another party has also entered into the market called Makelaarsland.nl (real estate agent land). These guys offer a fixed fee for selling your house eur 795, while regulare real estate agents charge 1 – 1,5 % of the selling price. If your house is eur 228.000  (average price in The Netherlands) then the regular real estate agents charge between eur 2280 and eur 3460. Quite a difference! The only thing you have to do yourself is sow the people around. This is seen by many as a drawback, but I see it as something positive. The sellers are emotionally attached and know exactly what the are selling and what they have adjusted in the house. They can give the best explanation. Especially compared to some of the so-called professionals, who sometimes didn’t know anything more that the sellers filled in on their fact sheet.

 

Both our houses (old and new) will take quite some of our time in the near future. The exploration into this huge market will continue for us and I already know it will change considerably in the near future.

 

Good fun to see it change!