We Can’t Sell Our House
- Posted by JvW on May 15th, 2009 filed in Real estate
Not right now anyway. We can’t even list it. Just the thought of listing it feels like burning a pile of $100 bills.
Make that $1000 bills.
Last year, my husband got a new job and we decided to plan a move closer to where he works. This weekend we met with a realtor to sit down and go over some numbers: what similar houses are selling for, our appraisal, her recommended list price.
When we bought the house in 2005, we paid $280,000 for it. At the time, it appraised for $305,000. We knew the appraisal had decreased, but didn’t expect such a difference. The current appraisal for the house is $251,000.
Our mortgage right now is about $253,000. Even if we sold for the appraised value, we’d be losing money. However, the realtor recommended, if we were to list, to price it at $235,000. I almost laughed in her face.
So now my poor husband is coming to grips with his 90 minute commute for the forseeable future, and we’re looking into refinancing our ARM into a fixed rate mortgage. I think we knew this would happen all along, but seeing it in black and white is disheartening.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Oh, I’m so sorry. We were in the same boat trying to sell our house last year. We ended up not selling it but renting it and it has worked out but man was it a stressful time. We just needed enough rent money to cover the mortgage, taxes and insurance. It comes to about $1000/month. Good luck to you both!
Jerry
http://www.leads4insurance.com
May 17th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Thanks, Jerry. We’re looking into renting, but we aren’t sure if we’ll get enough to cover everything… or if we even want to deal with the hassle. Glad it workedout for you!
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