I checked my mailbox this week and I saw that an unsolicited letter had come from a realtor. These letters are not new to me now. They know I own my place and like a cold call, they write me a short form letter wondering if I’m looking to sell my place. They also mention that apartments of my size and type in this area are hot commodities. It’s easy to do comparisons on my block because the particular layout of my apartment is nearly identical on every floor of not just my building but two other buildings on this block. So in my building, there’s about 30 units of the one I live in, 32 units next door, and about 35 units next door to that one. Apparently the one-bedroom type I own is a hot seller.
Normally, these letters don’t have any concrete data to back it up, but the letter this week had actual numbers, and in this case, it was listing price and actual selling price. I had to read those two numbers several times to ensure I hadn’t got it wrong. The unit next door was listed at $359,000 but sold at $352,000. That’s crazy. About a year ago, I stopped looking at the listing prices for my apartment type and layout. People were listing at or just slightly above $300,000. Even at that price, I would have realized a healthy profit on my own apartment. I bought mine well below $300,000. I stopped looking at the numbers because I wasn’t even thinking about selling so these theoretical selling prices had no real meaning to me.
Fast-forward to this week. Somewhere during the year, the listing price jumped up another $50K. To ensure this wasn’t some odd anomaly, I fired up the real estate listings for this block. Two other units were listed at $350,000. So this is where we’re at now. Crazy indeed. If I may be honest for a second, while I enjoy living in my apartment, it’s not worth $350,000. As crazy as the prices are now, I’m still not thinking about selling. If I did, where would I move to in this market?