Okay, technically, we're not homeless. We just sold our Sunnyvale townhouse! For those of you who don't know, the Sunnyvale townhouse was my (Cheryl's) old place. We were pleasantly surprised at how quickly it sold, especially given the current state of the credit and real estate markets. It was on the market for less than a week *and* we got our asking price plus a bit more. It was all very exciting!
Our realtor, Royce Cablayan, was phenomenal! He was great to work with, very patient with all our questions and provided helpful suggestions on the improvements we should and shouldn't make to the place. I would definitely recommend him to anyone looking to buy or sell a place.
A couple of people have asked me if I'm sad about selling my place. Honestly, I'm not. I don't have any emotional attachments to it. It's probably because I haven't been living there for a while now. If I was still living in the place when we sold it, then I'd probably feel a bit sad. But I said my goodbyes about 5 months ago when I moved into Greg's townhouse in Santa Clara. I still have to correct myself when I talk about our home. Even though Greg's done so much to make sure that it feels like my home too and I consider our current residence my home, I often refer to it as Greg's place instead of our place or my place. It probably bothers me more than Greg that I do that. Hopefully, now that we've sold the Sunnyvale place, it'll be easier.
Other people have asked what we're going to do with the proceeds from the sale. Well, I've spent some of it on a new laptop (no, it's not a MacBook) that will hopefully arrive sometime next week. And we're going to use another chunk of it to upgrade our kitchen with new cabinets, counter, sink, lighting and appliances. (Which reminds me, has anyone recently purchased a dishwasher or range? If so, I'd appreciate any recommendations or thoughts you have on these appliances.) The rest of it has to go into a VERY safe short-term financial intsrument because it's our down payment for a single family home. We want to give Tachi a backyard to run around in. We haven't started looking and will probably wait until the government raises the conforming loan limit before we start to look. In the meantime, we can look forward to our remodeled kitchen.
4 comments:
Congrats! That sale was impressive, and I know cuz I've been looking for awhile!
Question tho...if you sell your place and don't roll it over into a new home purchase, how do you avoid the tax hit on your profit? Or does putting the $ toward home improvement cover that? And what made you sell vs. renting it out?
Cindy - Thanks! Good question about the taxes. Well, during this process, we found out that when you sell your primary residence (which it was for me), you can make up to $250,000 in profit if you're a single owner, twice that if you're married, and not owe any capital gains taxes. (While we got more than our asking price, we *definitely* didn't make more than $250K in profit.
Oh, and you don't have to buy another home with the sale proceeds! You can use the money to travel, buy a new laptop or remodel the kitchen. =) Pretty cool, eh?
Oh! I didn't know there was a protective limit under which you won't be taxed! Good to know, thanks! So since you and Greg are married, does that mean you can make up to $500K profit w/o being taxed, or is it still $250K because you owned it as a single person?
Cindy - I think it depends on how you file your taxes: married filing separately or married filing jointly. We didn't really look into that aspect because it didn't matter for us.
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