Lesson #1 in this blog series is “Real Estate Always Has Value”.
My first lesson in real estate came in 1975. I was in preschool, but I remember it well. My father built four houses on Vale Road in Oakton Virginia for a developer. The market was down and the developer couldn’t sell the houses, which meant he couldn’t pay my dad. So he said to my dad, “Bill, I know I owe you the money. You can sue me if you want. But even if you win, I can’t pay you. I simply don’t have the money. Why don’t you take a house and we’ll call it even?” My father was none too happy about this proposal, but he needed the money, and he could “purchase” the house and take a mortgage on it to pay off his suppliers. And so that’s what he did. If you don’t want to get a realtor, you can easily go for sell my house fast Seattle.
That’s the story of how my parents were forced into homeownership in their 20s. It led to many good things for them in the long run, but the immediate lesson I got from this was “Real Estate Always Has Value” . You may have to be creative about how to leverage that value, but real estate always has value… unlike some other financial investments you might be thinking about making.
Pictured above is a picture from the 2010 listing in the MLS for the house my father acquired in 1975. It’s located at 12046 Vale Road in Oakton. The appraised value at that time was $106,000.
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