While there is sometimes little choice as to whether you should stay in your or not, at other times it is necessary to decide if it is best to leave or stay. Factors which should be considered include the present real estate market, how much of the mortgage has been paid off, and possible improvements which could be made to the home.

The longer you wait to sell a home, the more of the mortgage will have been paid and the less will have to be repaid from the sale price, allowing a more expensive property to be purchased or more money to be left over and used for other purposes.

If there are repairs or significant improvements which would greatly increase the home’s value, it may be preferable to stay until they can be completed and/or money becomes available to finish them. However, there is always the possibility that the real estate market will have worsened by the time such efforts have reached completion.

Some people consider leaving their homes when they retire and have difficulty making mortgage payments with a fixed income. A somewhat preferable alternative to this, especially if real estate prices are low at the time, is a reverse mortgage; these enable retired homeowners to receive payments from the home’s equity until they can no longer live in the home (or death), at which time the mortgage and the reverse payments have to be repaid.

When real estate sales are slow, there’s no major reason not to offer the home for sale at a price which is desirable to you (there is always a chance someone will buy it), but it is best to stay until the market has improved before attempting to offer it at a competitive price.

In some cases it may be worth accepting less than you would like to receive for a home, if there are factors which mitigate the effect of this, such as being able to obtain a higher-paying job elsewhere or cutting expenses substantially (by renting an apartment or moving to a smaller home).

Overall, deciding whether or not, and how long, to stay in your home depends upon a variety of financial factors, as well as personal preferences regarding how you want to live. The costs of relocating to a new home (moving furniture, setting up new utility accounts, lost productivity, temporary storage, etc) should be kept in mind as well.