Wednesday, September 22, 2010

To sell or not to sell?

That is the question.

Whether tis' noble in the mind to suffer... (and spend money to sell)

... Or just suck it up and risk to rent it out.

That is exactly what we plan to do.


Here's why:


Last night we had a meeting with our Realtor, Beverly, who sold us the house when we moved in 4 1/2 years ago. We love this lady for so many reasons. I worked for her at one point, actually. It was pretty cool; about a year after living here she called me up one day asking if I would like to work for her new office. She said I made an impression on her when we went through the process of buying our house and it stuck with her. I was very flattered and excited for the opportunity. Since I wanted to continue my job at Chilis, I agreed to work 8am-3pm at her office then from there I would go work the night shift at Chilis at 4pm-10 or 11pm. That went on for about 4 months before I got pregnant with Emme and went back to having just the Chilis job. (Looking back I wish I chose the Realty job over Chilis- live and learn, right?).

Beverly is the most down to Earth old school person you could ever want to sell your house. In our meeting we discussed originally how we wanted to sell. After weighing the options and finding out that Cove dropped 10% in home value we were devastated to learn that after closing costs, Realtor fees, and any repairs buyers might ask for, we would be in the hole between 5k- 9k.

Ouch.

We have a savings for these exact reasons. But in the end, you want to KEEP your savings.

The meeting started off rough.

Options #2:

Wait for the market to raise back in value where it should be and rent it out/pay off more principal while doing so.

Sounds amazing right?

Except for the whole renting our first house- my love and pride and joy- to strangers, it is.

In the end, we could rent our house out and possibly make money off Renters, and that would go straight to paying more principal off so when we do sell we wont be upside down.

We trust our Realtor and her company to rent it to good people due to their process of finding renters. It includes extensive background checks and payment history's. Also, since we continued our Realty service with her, we get an amazing discount so the property management fees are perfect.

Eric and I decided in one years time we would reassess our situation and see if we should sell then.

One things for sure though, we are not prepared to spend a good chunk of our savings just to get rid of it and be burden-free. For most people, there is a cost to having that burden taken away. In our opinion, the cost was too great.

We both feel good about this decision. Although this is not the outcome we expected, we understand that this is the economy today, and soon it will turn around. Us, along with the rest of America, have been in a similar situation.

If our plan works and we are able to rent it to good people for a year or two, then we won't take a hit and actually depending if the market is ANY better we could be a success story.

The next step is pretty simple, actually. We fix up the outside and do some things here and there in the house and come October 1st - our house in up for rent! =)

My wonderful in-laws, Dennis and Debbie, are coming out soon to help with making our baby shine again. We are so grateful for their visits and help throughout the years.

I am still so proud of our story. Buying our first home when I was 19 and Eric was 21, was rewarding. We want to tell our kids one day our story and be an example... Ya know, how the American dream is still reachable. Knowing what we know now, we still wouldn't change our decision with buying the house. Our Realtor said if the 10% drop didn't happen, we would have sold our house within the month and had a couple grand in our pockets. Even though it's not in our favor now, we still hope to be an example and not only survive, but gain in the end. If not money, experience will be a nice trade off. We want to look back on this one day and think to ourselves "We made the best possible outcome out of a non-favorable situation".





Wish us luck during this trial and , of course, I will keep you updated on the new developments.

No comments:

Post a Comment