Selling the house that I grew up

[jkon]

I have a detached house in the overpopulated city where I live. I also own a small detached house near the beach, which I want to sell so I can buy something smaller on an island with no tourists (I dream). I pay taxes on these properties every year, along with an additional "property wealth tax" that feels really unfair. I am not wealthy—I can barely afford to keep them.

I spent the first 17 years of my life in a detached stone house among the ruins of ancient Sparta. For the last 30 years, I have been living in Athens or its suburbs (I’m 47). I haven’t visited Sparta in two years now. That house is large—244 square meters (2,626.39 square feet)—and sits on a big plot of land.

I feel guilty about selling it. The price isn’t what I think it’s worth, but it’s not like they’re stealing it from me either—it's somewhere in between. But it's not the price that worries me.

Selling the house where I grew up feels like cutting off my roots. I know I can’t afford to maintain it, especially if I’m not visiting, but just knowing it was there gave me some comfort.

Today, I received an offer from a buyer—not exactly what I was asking for, but not too far off either. I can’t keep all three properties, and I feel guilty about selling the house where I lived until I was 17. But I can’t turn it into a museum… "This is the house where Kon grew up."

It’s sad, but I have to move on.

Have you ever been through something similar?

[Dani]

Why did you tag this thread 'gaming' and 'virtual-reality'? I changed the tag to finance, which is the closest tag I can think of that would fit, I suppose.

I am in a bit of a similar boat. I lived in a very large house with my parents in New York from the age of 2 until I was 27, at which point I bought my own co-op with DaniWeb money about a mile down the road. My entire extended family has remained in or around New York City for 4 generations.

When I was 36, I moved to California, and I now own my house out here. It's a small starter home because Silicon Valley prices are insane. However, I love it here and plan to stay here forever. I'm currently trying to sell my place in New York.

My dad has since passed away and my mom bought a condo in a high rise in Florida, which she loves because she has lots of friends there now.

However, depending on how my health journey goes, if my husband and I end up starting a family out here (which is hopefully the plan), my mom would want to be out here with us for a large portion of the year to spend time with her grandchild. (I'm an only child, so there are no siblings scattered around anywhere else.)

However, my mom wouldn't be able to afford to buy even a very tiny studio out here without having to sell something else. She wouldn't want to sell her place in Florida because she has an active social life there. Most of her friends in New York have since moved away or she lost touch with them. If she were to sell the big house in NY, it would be the place where she lived with my dad and raised me, and where I lived for the majority of my life. It would also be the only big home in the family, as her place in Florida is rather small and my house is also quite small.

[rproffitt]

I've been lucky and able to retain my 1st home and with luck and research have it in property management so there's not much I need to do to keep it rented out.

That said some areas are faced with declining populations such as Japan. See https://www.akiya-mart.com/

What's quite wacky is that in the US we have about 15 million empty homes yet something is keeping these off the market.

[Dani]

Renting it out might be a viable solution for jkon. Not so in my case, where my mom would need enough for a down payment on a place in California.

As for that Japanese housing marketplace, without being familiar with Japan and/or the neighborhoods, there's no knowing if any of those homes are in good neighborhoods or what condition they are in.

The same with the US. There's certainly a shortage of affordable homes here in the Bay Area.

[Reverend Jim]

Something similar. The family house was built in 1910 (the year my dad was born) on 30 acres of prime vegetable growing land. The acre and a half we lived on was beautifully treed and grassed. Because of healtb issues my dad sold the land to developers under the condition that when they decided to build we would move out. That was more than 10 years later (1978). My one regret is that I didn't take many many more pictures when it was in prime shape. The buildings are long gone but the acre and a half is now a park.

Three years ago we sold our cottage at Shebandowan Lake but this time my son brought out a VR camera and a drone. We did several 360-VR movies and overhead drone videos so on top of the memories we can pop on the headset whenever we feel nostalgic.

So my recommendation is that you take more pictures and movies than you think you will ever want.

[Dani]

Jim,

Is that the lake you would always spend summers at? Where are you currently living? City? Suburbs? Rural?

[Reverend Jim]

Ayup. First went to Shebandowan summer of 1981 (wife's family cottage) and sold in 2021. At that point it had been in the family for almost 100 years. It was getting too hard to maintain at our age and the drive (close to eight hours) was just getting to be too much (I did the round trip three times that summer to bring stuff home). Also with summers getting warmer the lake was getting soupy and not refreshing, and the neighbours were getting more numerous and noisier. Even with 450 feet of lakefront we were noticing the drop in privacy.

I got married in 1982 and we live on the absolute very edge of the north east corner of Winnipeg. The Perimeter Highway is on the other side of a berm east of our back yard. We can be out of the city in five minutes and at Birds Hill Park to go cross country skiing in fifteen. If we walk across the highway we can walk or bike along a country path along the Floodway all the way to Lockport without traffic and city noise.

One of the great things about growing up on a former market garden was the abundance of fresh vegetables. You haven't tasted real food until you've had pesticide free yellow & green beans, peas, beets, and corn on the cob cooked five minutes after being picked. A raw carrot freshly pulled and wiped on a pant leg doesn't compare to store bought. Also a great place to play hide and seek.

I think I'll shed a tear or two and go back to sleep.