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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: merlin7676 on April 02, 2018, 08:25:25 AM

Title: What to do with proceeds from selling a house?
Post by: merlin7676 on April 02, 2018, 08:25:25 AM
My DH and I just sold our "second/weekend/vacation/retirement" house.  We originally bought it so that it would be paid off and we could retire there to live permanently when the time came. We currently live in our condo "in the city" and went there for weekends and staycations and the likes.

However over the last few years we have seen more flooding and king tides come up the beach access roads (it is 3 blocks from the ocean) as well as my husband expressing more interest in "moving back home" to Montana.

So the time frame for selling was in the next three to five years.  But just to see what we could potentially get for it (we've put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears as it was a very, very much fix upper) we had a realtor come in at the beginning of the year. She proposed listing it at a much, much higher price than we ever thought we could get or what it was worth.  But long story short, it sold 6 days after listing and we made a "profit" of about 95K.

The second part of this story is that with the DH wanting to move back home when we retire is that we did find a piece of property that we fell in love with that we'd like to buy and pay off, and then build once we're close to retiring and moving there.  We ended up flying there to see in person and made an offer...only to find out someone else had made an offer 12 hours prior.  But since then we've heard that thru various issues and contingencies it might not go through. So we went ahead and made a backup offer which the seller accepted so if the first does fall though, then we automatically move into first position and essentially have bought the property. The closing in Montana is typically 45 days so the first buyer still has about a week and a half to either close or the contract expires and we get it.

So assuming that we don't end up getting it, we're going to invest the money but not sure where. We don't have a time frame as we still plan on buying something else property-wise at a later date but it probably wouldn't be for another 2 or 3 years depending on what is on the market and if/when we found something we'd want to make an offer on.
For this short time frame, what would be the best investment for the money?  We were thinking a split between the index fund and CDs. Doing a rolling method with the CDs so every month one comes due and then we can either take it or roll it back into another one.  Then if we found something we'd like to make an offer on, we could pull the index fund money and whatever CD's are ready for the down payment and use the rest of the CDs for the monthly payments until they are exhausted.

But as neither of us have much real estate knowledge I'm looking to those of you who have sold before and what you did with the money?

thanks
Title: Re: What to do with proceeds from selling a house?
Post by: Goldy on April 02, 2018, 07:47:56 PM
I wouldn’t bother with laddered CD’s, just dump it all in a 2 yr CD at ally and if you need the money you simply pay the 2 month interest fee.