Update as of 11/19/11...just wanted to update my thread...we closed on the sale of the house yesterday. It is over & turned out to NOT be a Short Sale. We didn't walk away with much but we didn't have to bring any $ to the table. We are renting back near my hometown & getting settled in...the timing ended up being kind of crazy. Our buyers delays ended up putting us in a situation to rent my Dad's old place. His renters were skipping out on the last months rent at the end of October so he offered it to us for a very reasonable amt. It's not in a great area but nothing we can't handle. We did end up having to keep paying our mortgage & taxes for almost 2 months longer than we planned which combined with the moving expenses wiped out most of what we had but being near family & renting from my Dad will take the pressure off for awhile.
The last few weeks were interesting for us...never a dull moment!!! A blizzard came through before Halloween (unheard of) and a town owned tree on our street knocked a pole out, damaged one of our vehicles, ripped all the utility connections & their casings off our home & left us without power for 7 days...7 days, no power, while trying to pack up the house, with 2 little ones...FUN!!! BUT when I finally got someone in the town to listen to me, they paid the electrician directly to fix the damage to our home & did it without any of the normal "red tape" since the closing was in jeopardy & they didn't want anyone moving in or out of the town with a bad taste in their mouth. (they were getting so beat up over the response to the tree damage all over the town so I guess they saw it as a good deed)
Then the night before our move, my DH went out to grab sandwiches & a gal who fell asleep behind the wheel rammed into our car messing it up nicely, but she did admit she fell asleep & was issued a summons so we should hopefully not have insurance impact on our end. DH was fine & just shook his head & said hopefully, 2012 will be a little more fun for us. lol
Thx again for all the kind words, support & those who shared their similar stories. Good luck to everyone struggling to hold onto their homes, sell their homes right now & just get by.
I am going to try & provide as much relevant info as possible...I am looking for a "WWYD"
We have been trying to sell our house for a year-1st 6 months we were with a realtor who had us priced too high. We had lots of showings but no offers. In Feb, we went FSBO & paid the flat fee for full listing rights on realtor.com & the MLS. We also dropped our price dramatically. Showings continued & within a month we had our 1st offer but it was very low & we got them up a little but when they came back for a 2nd look, they wanted too many new things. (new furnace & central air-which both worked great & have detailed service records with no issues). Then another offer came in & we agreed on a price but they walked because they decided to stay in their current town. Last week, we finally settled with a cash buyer who put us through the ringer. Really low price & taking many personal belongings of ours. But we have the house we want to buy an hour away where my family all live & didn't want to lose it to another offer so we decided to go ahead with the cash buyer. Yesterday, she backed out of a signed contract for personal reasons relating to her divorce. Our lawyer says we may have a breach of contract suit but those things can't even be evaluated until you sell & have damages & we aren't the lawsuit type.
Our situation is this-DH was laid off from a great job 2 years ago. My father in law is putting our new house in his name because our income has become so low & much of it off the books. I watch another little one everyday & DH has been consulting in his field of sales/marketing. We are both looking for better work & have tons of resumes out & feelers out, are college grads with long term experience in our fields, but it is a crazy job market. I may do daycare in the new house & even try & do housecleaning, waitress a few nights/ week etc. We will be making the payments but we know he will offer to help too. We will also have a garden, chickens & my family a mile away. More resources, more contacts, cheaper living etc.
The new mortgage & taxes will be a 50% reduction of our current. A huge drop. If we continue to pay our current mortgage, we will be dipping into the 20% down payment (my 401k plan from my pre-motherhood career).
We are seriously considering moving fwd with the purchase of the new house in my hometown & stopping our mortgage payments on this house effective July 1 or Aug 1. We would pay our 3rd 1/4 tax bill since they are not included in our mortgage. We would use a lockbox on our empty house for sale so realtors can get in & out, check on it a couple times a week & continue to market the heck out of it hoping we get another offer within 2-3 months so the damage to our credit isn't dramatic. Worst case, once we are 30 days behind, we would even consider a super low price & ending up in a slight short sale situation.
We have no car payment & a toyota prius with almost 70,000 miles on it. We have a backup vehicle-my paid off jeep wrangler with 130,000. We have no debt & would continue to pay everything else on time.
WWYD? I think what we keep coming back to is that we don't want to lose this great house, in the perfect location, at a fantastic price while continuing to dump money into the house we know will sell eventually anyway. The big "if" is how long before we sell it & therefore, what hit will our credit take????
The last few weeks were interesting for us...never a dull moment!!! A blizzard came through before Halloween (unheard of) and a town owned tree on our street knocked a pole out, damaged one of our vehicles, ripped all the utility connections & their casings off our home & left us without power for 7 days...7 days, no power, while trying to pack up the house, with 2 little ones...FUN!!! BUT when I finally got someone in the town to listen to me, they paid the electrician directly to fix the damage to our home & did it without any of the normal "red tape" since the closing was in jeopardy & they didn't want anyone moving in or out of the town with a bad taste in their mouth. (they were getting so beat up over the response to the tree damage all over the town so I guess they saw it as a good deed)
Then the night before our move, my DH went out to grab sandwiches & a gal who fell asleep behind the wheel rammed into our car messing it up nicely, but she did admit she fell asleep & was issued a summons so we should hopefully not have insurance impact on our end. DH was fine & just shook his head & said hopefully, 2012 will be a little more fun for us. lol
Thx again for all the kind words, support & those who shared their similar stories. Good luck to everyone struggling to hold onto their homes, sell their homes right now & just get by.
I am going to try & provide as much relevant info as possible...I am looking for a "WWYD"
We have been trying to sell our house for a year-1st 6 months we were with a realtor who had us priced too high. We had lots of showings but no offers. In Feb, we went FSBO & paid the flat fee for full listing rights on realtor.com & the MLS. We also dropped our price dramatically. Showings continued & within a month we had our 1st offer but it was very low & we got them up a little but when they came back for a 2nd look, they wanted too many new things. (new furnace & central air-which both worked great & have detailed service records with no issues). Then another offer came in & we agreed on a price but they walked because they decided to stay in their current town. Last week, we finally settled with a cash buyer who put us through the ringer. Really low price & taking many personal belongings of ours. But we have the house we want to buy an hour away where my family all live & didn't want to lose it to another offer so we decided to go ahead with the cash buyer. Yesterday, she backed out of a signed contract for personal reasons relating to her divorce. Our lawyer says we may have a breach of contract suit but those things can't even be evaluated until you sell & have damages & we aren't the lawsuit type.
Our situation is this-DH was laid off from a great job 2 years ago. My father in law is putting our new house in his name because our income has become so low & much of it off the books. I watch another little one everyday & DH has been consulting in his field of sales/marketing. We are both looking for better work & have tons of resumes out & feelers out, are college grads with long term experience in our fields, but it is a crazy job market. I may do daycare in the new house & even try & do housecleaning, waitress a few nights/ week etc. We will be making the payments but we know he will offer to help too. We will also have a garden, chickens & my family a mile away. More resources, more contacts, cheaper living etc.
The new mortgage & taxes will be a 50% reduction of our current. A huge drop. If we continue to pay our current mortgage, we will be dipping into the 20% down payment (my 401k plan from my pre-motherhood career).
We are seriously considering moving fwd with the purchase of the new house in my hometown & stopping our mortgage payments on this house effective July 1 or Aug 1. We would pay our 3rd 1/4 tax bill since they are not included in our mortgage. We would use a lockbox on our empty house for sale so realtors can get in & out, check on it a couple times a week & continue to market the heck out of it hoping we get another offer within 2-3 months so the damage to our credit isn't dramatic. Worst case, once we are 30 days behind, we would even consider a super low price & ending up in a slight short sale situation.
We have no car payment & a toyota prius with almost 70,000 miles on it. We have a backup vehicle-my paid off jeep wrangler with 130,000. We have no debt & would continue to pay everything else on time.
WWYD? I think what we keep coming back to is that we don't want to lose this great house, in the perfect location, at a fantastic price while continuing to dump money into the house we know will sell eventually anyway. The big "if" is how long before we sell it & therefore, what hit will our credit take????