How to Weather the Real Estate Bubble Corsicana TX

San Diego real estate agent Curt Johnson jokes that the way to weather the soft real estate market is “don’t get divorced and don’t lose your job.” It’s his way of saying that the best thing to do may be to hold off on selling if you possibly can.

He knows from personal experience. Johnson, an agent at Century 21 Award, a brokerage on the RealEstate.com network, bought his home in 1989 on “about the worst day you could ever close escrow in San Diego,” he said. “It wasn’t worth what I paid for it for the next six years.”

Now, it’s worth four times what he paid for it. The lesson? Holding on to a home can usually get you through even the biggest real estate bubble.

If you do have to move, consider renting the home to cover your mortgage, Johnson said. If you have to sell, “You have to be better than all the rest,” he said.

In addition to getting the home in tip-top shape, make it easy to sell by letting your agent put a lockbox on the door and show it any time, he said. Also consider paying a higher-than-normal commission to the buyer’s agent to ensure more traffic, he said.

Getting traffic to your home is important with so many homes on the market these days. In eastern Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area, the number of single-family homes on the market is more than three times the normal amount, said Bill Stanger, an agent with Prudential California Realty, a brokerage on the RealEstate.com network.

Huge builder incentives in new developments can make it more difficult for existing homes to compete on value, Stanger said. Falling home values also have left many homeowners owing more on their mortgages than the home is worth.

But Stanger said lenders are sometimes willing to accept a short sale, in which the home sells for less than what’s owed on it, to avoid the lengthy and expensive foreclosure process and potentially even higher losses.

Debbie Wong, a Prudential California Realty agent in San Mateo, Calif., said buyers need to check their credit before they look at any homes to see what they can afford.

Buyers can improve their credit scores by several points over just 30 to 90 days by doing things like paying down credit cards to a certain balance or paying more than the minimum each month, she said. A higher credit rating can translate into a lower mortgage interest rate.

Another possibility in an expensive market is to consider partnerships, she said. One family can live in the home and one can invest. Or an older couple with a lot of equity might be will