This recession is great......

[softball]

at least a small silver lining....

I am in the middle of a real estate transaction. Here is how it works by the numbers after a stinking hot real estate market crashed.

June....I list my apartment for 989K. Lots of interest. Lots of traffic. No offers. Time goes on. Nothing is selling. I drop my price to 877K. Big drop. Around 12 per cent.

Last week I get two offers. One collapses and I am in the middle of the second. I accept 850K. Down 14 per cent.

I now have an accepted offer on a house that was listed in June around the same time as my apartment. At that time it was listed at 1.39 million.

If I had sold my apartment at full list and bought this house at full list, it would have cost me and extra 401K.

My offer was accepted at 965K. Down around 30 per cent. I will now have to pay an extra 115K for that house. Huge difference.

Its a great time to move up if you sell low and buy low. Not a good time if you need to recover your equity, but that is not the opportunity. Moving up is.

My gamble is the house that I hopefully will be completing on this week, will return to 1.39 million in a couple or three years. However, I think this is still a win situation.

There are a few hurdles to overcome this week, but I am cautiously optimistic.