Hoping some of you might be able to advise me a bit. We are in a house we cannot really afford...we've always made our payment, but it's been a struggle and now with student loans coming due and preschool fees starting in the fall, we cannot balance our budget anymore. Knowing this, we put our house up for sale in January. We've had zero offers. We have had a lot of showings, a few multiple showings, but no offers. The problem is that we bought our house three years ago and the height of the market and paid $151,000 w/$10,000 down. We've put a lot of $ into our house and in the past six months have drained our savings completely making updates and repairs suggested by our realtor to get our home to sell. The house is listed at $154,900, and to break even (with paying closing for the buyers), we need to sell for $154,00.
Our goal is to move to a much less expensive home within walking distance of the school our son will attend (public montessori where we pay $3000/year for two years of preschool and then he goes FREE thru 8th grade). For us, this school is non-negotiable. We are 100% sending him there. The $3000 for two years is not fun at all, but public Montessori is amazing, and it's 100% worth it to us to pay for two years so he can attend free for 9 yrs.
We have one car, so ideally will be w/in walking distance, but we do have plan b if this is impossible, which involves the gparents.
Our realtor says we need to drop our house to $149,000. To do that, we need to take out a $6,000 loan just to break even. That seems so crazy to me, but may be something we need to do. Our other option (which may not be an option) is to refinance and cut all extras (home phone, netflix, newspaper, cable, etc), but I don't know that we have enough equity to refinance, and we def do not have any money to put into refinancing.
My husband is a veteran so we can get a VA loan for a new house, but our current loan is not VA, so I don't know that we can refi to a VA.
We would need to get our payment to about $800 from the current $1200.
I work from home part-time doing fundraising, outreach, etc for a non-profit and bring home between $1000 and $1200/month. DH is a professor and brings home $3000/month. If we can move, we'll be walking distance to the YMCA, library, coffee shop, etc, and I could pick up another part time job while DS is at school. We are not walking distance to anything right now.
I realize that our situation is not exactly dire, b/c we are both educated and employable and very worst case scenario, I could get a job at night somewhere to make up some extra $, but ideally we can avoid that. I have anxiety issues from a previous car accident and do not currently drive.
So long story short(er), can anyone tell me how refinancing works? We have about 7% equity in our home. And how insane is it to take out a loan to sell our house and break even if it means getting into a cheaper house in the area we want to be in (even though it's just 15 minutes from here)?
Thank you!
Our goal is to move to a much less expensive home within walking distance of the school our son will attend (public montessori where we pay $3000/year for two years of preschool and then he goes FREE thru 8th grade). For us, this school is non-negotiable. We are 100% sending him there. The $3000 for two years is not fun at all, but public Montessori is amazing, and it's 100% worth it to us to pay for two years so he can attend free for 9 yrs.
We have one car, so ideally will be w/in walking distance, but we do have plan b if this is impossible, which involves the gparents.
Our realtor says we need to drop our house to $149,000. To do that, we need to take out a $6,000 loan just to break even. That seems so crazy to me, but may be something we need to do. Our other option (which may not be an option) is to refinance and cut all extras (home phone, netflix, newspaper, cable, etc), but I don't know that we have enough equity to refinance, and we def do not have any money to put into refinancing.
My husband is a veteran so we can get a VA loan for a new house, but our current loan is not VA, so I don't know that we can refi to a VA.
We would need to get our payment to about $800 from the current $1200.
I work from home part-time doing fundraising, outreach, etc for a non-profit and bring home between $1000 and $1200/month. DH is a professor and brings home $3000/month. If we can move, we'll be walking distance to the YMCA, library, coffee shop, etc, and I could pick up another part time job while DS is at school. We are not walking distance to anything right now.
I realize that our situation is not exactly dire, b/c we are both educated and employable and very worst case scenario, I could get a job at night somewhere to make up some extra $, but ideally we can avoid that. I have anxiety issues from a previous car accident and do not currently drive.
So long story short(er), can anyone tell me how refinancing works? We have about 7% equity in our home. And how insane is it to take out a loan to sell our house and break even if it means getting into a cheaper house in the area we want to be in (even though it's just 15 minutes from here)?
Thank you!
. School districts can't make parents send their child to preschool as a requirement for attending Kindergarten unless it free and provide to everyone. Which I know they aren't totally requiring, because you could sent you dc to another Kindergarten--but the are making it a requirement to get into this montessori program (it sound like there is a low income provision of some sort, but lots of people make too much to be eligible for Headstart that can't swing $6000 for two years of preschool). Anyway, I would be doing some research of the legality of this practice and then be on the telephone talking to either the district administrator or the assistant district administrator in charge of this preschool.
