Friday, August 20, 2010

"Just" money

So our house appraised too low and the mortgage company the buyers are using won't lend them the money to buy our house, so of course we have to lower the price. Apparently the improvements we've done to the house don't really increase its value. But our hands are pretty tied here. This sucks so much. The tiny bit of money we were going to be able to have after we pay off our current mortgage has disappeared. We have lost so much money on this house. In retrospect, we never should have bought this house. But like a lot of people, we were enamored with it and the idea of being a homeowner.

T is out of his mind with anger about losing so much money. It is a lot of money. A lot. Like several years of working worth. And he feels the buyers are taking advantage of us. (We happen to know that one of the buyer's family has a lot of money.)

I am so anxious to pass papers and put all this behind us so that we can just start our life in our new house. And hopefully we will not have to move for 20 or 30 years.

I've packed a bunch, but I don't feel ready. We move on Tuesday. The new house is ready for us, though. (Well, everyone except for B-dog because we don't have a fence out back yet. I think poor B-dog is going to be miserable when we move.)

No one is happy around here these days. I hope I can convince T that it's "just" money and we need to move on.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

So sorry to hear about this. It sounds like you have already come to an agreement with your buyers, but you should also know that you have the right to ask for a second appraisal--or to commission one yourselves. Appraisal values can vary substantially, especially for an older home; comps can be hard to find. We were in the same situation with our house a few months ago, and a second appraisal came in above the agreed upon price. What did your realtor think about their appraisal?

Even losing money on this house, it sounds like there is a lot of value moving to the new place. Good luck! Packing with a small child is no fun. No fun at all. The only way we survived the move with a one-year-old (and we love our new place!) was having my folks here to help out for a week. Good luck!!!!

Delenn said...

One of the hardest things in life is to "learn" these lessons in bad decisions/investments. Our first car was a leased car...and we sunk so much money into it--for a cheap car it ended up being expensive. Each year I think we have one Royal Screw-Up that sets us back--and all you can do is say we won't do that again. And pick yourself up...its "just" money. ;-)

Hope things improve once you move.

niobe said...

The same thing (well, something pretty similar) happened to us with our first house -- a townhouse that we bought while we were living in another city, before we had kids.

It was painful to lose so much money, but the pain faded fairly quickly after we had settled into our new city and new house.

Although, unlike you, we had lost *so* much money that we couldn't afford to buy a new house and had to rent for several years.

Robin said...

Oh, so sorry. This market has been hard on everyone though. It's not like you guys just made bad choices or something. You did your best, and sometimes that's not enough when you're dealing with "just money". :( It still sucks though. I hope you will enjoy your new house (and get a fence soon for poor B-dog!).

ultimatejourney said...

I often wish I had a crystal ball to help me with major life decisions. Sadly, I still don't have one :)

I'm sorry things aren't working out well with the sale. I hope you are all able to move on quickly. This is clearly a situation where you just have to do your best and forget the rest.

Good luck with the move!

Anonymous said...

This whole situation kinda just sucks. I hope the new house makes it all worth it, if not once you get there, once the market has a chance to recover a bit.

Carey said...

Ugh... we were (are) in the same boat with our CA house. It appraised over $60k less than our sale price. The sale fell through - we could not afford to sell for less (our mortgage was our sale price). In the end though, things work out - I hope it does for you guys too! Hard to get past the $$ part.