{"id":81513,"date":"2025-07-25T11:33:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T18:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/?p=81513"},"modified":"2025-07-25T11:33:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T18:33:42","slug":"selling-loss-personal-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/selling-loss-personal-story\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m a Housing Reporter Who Took a $25K Hit Selling the House I Bought at the Peak of the Market. Here\u2019s What I Learned."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article was first published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inman.com\/2025\/07\/21\/heres-what-a-redfin-data-journalist-learned-from-taking-a-25k-bath-on-the-sale-of-his-house\/\">Inman<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Senior Data Journalist Mark Worley co-authored a new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/selling-at-a-loss-2025\/\">Redfin report<\/a> showing that roughly 6% of U.S. home sellers are at risk of selling at a loss. The analysis hit close to home\u2014he and his wife just did exactly that, selling their St. Louis home for less than they paid.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In early 2022, my wife and I were temporarily living downstairs at her parents\u2019 house, south of Seattle, trying to work out where to move next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had just returned from my native Australia, where I had been posted by a previous employer to help open a new office. (Long story short: the office opened a few weeks before the pandemic hit and we spent much of our time abroad under covid-related lockdowns and curfews.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like many at the time, we could work from home and live anywhere in the country. We looked at a map and considered our options. We didn\u2019t want to follow the crowds flocking to pandemic homebuying boom towns like Austin or Tampa. With a relatively constrained budget, we looked to the more-affordable Midwest, and landed on St. Louis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I had connections in St. Louis\u2014my Oklahoman dad spent time living there in his younger years. And when I hit the road to explore the U.S. a decade ago, St. Louis was my favorite stop. The city is a long way from its heyday, but it has a rich history, world-class arts and cultural institutions, a dynamic food scene, friendly people\u2026and gorgeous homes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There, within a mile or two of the iconic Gateway Arch, one can find a beautifully renovated historic brick home in a walkable, tree-lined neighborhood for less than the price of a one-bedroom apartment back in Seattle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We packed up our car and moved to the center of the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Chasing our dream home&#8230;and losing out<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We chased dream homes for months\u2014putting in offers well over asking price, adding escalation clauses and waiving inspections where possible. It wasn\u2019t enough. We ended up as the second-placed offer on four separate occasions and it felt like we would never find a home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even as rising inflation pushed mortgage rates skyward in mid-late 2022, and the real estate market started sputtering nationally, it didn\u2019t feel that way in St. Louis. The homes we wanted were listed on Thursday and went under contract by Monday, if they even made it that far (many were snapped up before the first open house).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I remember telling my wife at the time it didn&#8217;t make sense to rent in a city where buying was so affordable. So onward we went with our house hunt. Now, with 20-20 hindsight, I know the better financial decision would have been to rent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead, we returned to a house that had been sitting on the market for more than two months\u2014unusual given the speed most homes were snapped up at that time. It was a beautiful old <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/school\/178104\/MO\/St-Louis\/South-City\/filter\/viewport=38.63863:38.53826:-90.1644:-90.31117,no-outline\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">South City<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> home, completely renovated with all the modern upgrades we were looking for. It had a lovely yard with a two-story carriage house for a garage. We had initially ruled it out because it was priced a little high and located outside of the neighborhoods we wanted to live in, but after losing out so many times we had to shift our strategy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We offered $50,000 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">under<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> its original list price and the sellers couldn\u2019t sign the paperwork quickly enough\u2014definitely a red flag in hindsight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">None of this is to say we regret buying the property. We loved that house. And we truly loved living in St. Louis. But we overpaid, setting a then-record for the neighborhood. We bought at the very top of the market in a part of the city where homes did not sell quickly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Two years later, life changed and we had a new decision to make<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Less than two years after moving in, our life changed. My wife was pregnant, I had a job offer with a great company in Seattle and we decided to move back closer to our family and friends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We had two options: sell the house, or rent it out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was an easy choice. We knew the stress\u2014and cost\u2014of maintaining a 130-year-old rental property from 2,000 miles away, while taking care of a newborn baby, was too much for us to handle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">St. Louis home prices had continued to rise in the two years after we bought, but in our neighborhood, sales were slow. Buyers were no longer overextending themselves the way we had. So we listed our home at the same price that we had bought it, knowing we were taking a loss when agent fees and closing costs were taken into account.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not a single potential buyer came to view the house in the first two weeks it was on the market. By then, we were back in the Pacific Northwest, carrying rent payments in addition to our mortgage. The weather was turning cold and homebuying season was almost over.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We lowered the price by $25,000 and a single out-of-state buyer saw the home online and fell in love, much as we had. They made an offer at the revised list price that we gratefully accepted. This time, we were the sellers rushing to get the paperwork signed so we could finally exhale. We successfully closed the deal last November.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Very <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">few homeowners in the U.S. are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/selling-at-a-loss-2025\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at risk<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of selling their homes for less than they bought them for. But those who have to sell now, after buying at the tail end of the pandemic buying spree, are much more likely than others to take a hit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We learned that the hard way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Buying a home will always be a long-term investment. Trying to time the market is a fool\u2019s errand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, while we walked away with less money, we were carrying two years of amazing memories, new friendships and a beautiful baby girl. In my mind, we came out ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was first published on Inman Senior Data Journalist Mark Worley co-authored a new Redfin report showing that roughly 6% of U.S. home sellers are at risk of selling at a loss. The analysis hit close to home\u2014he and his wife just did exactly that, selling their St. Louis home for less than they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13568,"featured_media":81516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[626],"tags":[20,623],"coauthors":[682],"class_list":["post-81513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-housing-affordability","tag-national"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.7 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I\u2019m a Housing Reporter Who Took a $25K Hit Selling the House I Bought at the Peak of the Market. 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