Deja Vu

So here’s deja vu for you. The housing market in Albuquerque is peaking. I can feel it. Inventory is shrinking and all the weird houses that have been rentals or gone unsold are now being listed for prices higher than they’re worth. Everything I look at is rundown inside. The owners aren’t taking their time to get the houses ready – they’re too confident in the market. But I think that if they don’t sell this summer, they aren’t going to sell for a long while.

I’m hanging out in John’s house in Placitas at the moment, but it’s not where I live, I have my own comfy-cosy townhome that’s set up just how I like it. We’re getting John’s house ready to sell in preparation for moving in together, but there’s still a lot more he wants to do to get the house ready. I don’t want to wait for all the stuff to be done; I want to list it yesterday already because I’m so worried about the market. But maybe we’ve got another year before it all comes crashing down.

I’m looking for a house for the two of us to live together. It’s not the best time to buy, but we want to move in together. I’ve been looking all winter. He wants a lot of garage/parking space and we want to be near trails. I’ve been looking all over the place, including the east mountains. I’m not finding anything; there’s just crap on the market for too much money. But there’s one in the foothills, on the east side of Tramway that I’m going to go take a look at tomorrow. It’s fairly far south in the northeast heights, not the better northern section, but it’s still north of the freeway.

Did you read that like I was writing it today? I was. It’s completely accurate for today.

It’s also completely accurate for March 2007. Read it either way. Read it for 2007 or read it for 2019. It is the same. Here we go again. Deja vu.

Only difference is we’ve put a ton of money and work into John’s house in the past 12 years, so we’re really, really, really going to get it sold this time! Like no kidding, we’re going to give it away if we have to. It’s not worth any more than it was 12 years ago, even after all our renovations, but it’s worth a lot more than it was 10 years ago after the crash.

Here’s the listing photo of the one I’m looking at tomorrow. It’s within a few blocks of the one we bought in 2007.

It’s nothing exciting, because I’m being much more careful about the price of the new house if we do end up buying in Albuquerque. I’ve given up on the idea of getting a pool now that we’ve decided not to stay here forever. I don’t want to spend too much money because we’ll want to be able to turn around and sell it in a few years. And darned if I’m going to lose a bunch of money again in another crash. Because eventually (if not sooner) we’re moving south! Then I’ll buy that pool.

Here’s the google street view from the summertime. You’ve got to wonder about the quality of the listing agent when the street view is better than the marketing photos, but then, there’s not a lot you can do about it being winter time.

Last time we were in Albuquerque for 5 years before we moved to California. Will we be here another 5 years? I’m so impatient to move south, but John’s not ready to go out and get a new job yet. So fine, if he’s not going to go get a different job elsewhere, he needs to get a lower stress job with his current company because he’s working himself to death, and that’s not ok. And, we need a house!