Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
early morning
The Fun of Losing Your House To Foreclosure - Part (too numerous to keep track of)
Last week, I received an email from the realtor who has been trying to sell our (former) house for the outrageous price of $194k (we’ve had one person look at the house in two months), telling me that the house was going up for auction on April 24th. Great, another auction for the house. They really want to get rid of us, I guess. The fun part of that was that they were insisting on three open houses (12- 4p) before the auction date. Yes, four hour open houses with an animal sanctuary in the house. It sounded like tons of fun. Obviously, it was just stressful finding out about the auction, but adding the open houses to the stress was above & beyond. I received an email a couple of days later saying that a Fannie Mae inspector was in the area and needed to inspect the house that afternoon for the auction. Well, since I don’t usually pick up my email until the middle of the night, he was out of luck. Several days later, I received another email from the realtor telling me that the auction had been cancelled. Could we really have been that lucky that I pick up my email so late and that the house wasn’t able to be inspected on that particular day? Did they cancel the auction because it wasn’t inspected with a certain group of houses?
Our goal has always (well, almost always, I guess) to attempt to buy our house back with the help of an investor, and to then rent it back from them. Or, we were hoping to be able to figure out some things to sell or to maybe possibly hopefully get my disability case finally settled (after about 9 months of waiting for them to get all the records they wanted, my case has finally gone to the medical examiner) and use the backpay as down payment on the house. There is NO way that in this market that this house is worth almost $200k. Not even close. Fannie Mae paid $135k for it, and with broken pool pumps, flooring that needs to be replaced for someone else to live here (unless, they too, have a parrot room where they want linoleum), a leaking sprinkler system, a collapsed cabinet in the garage, and our big (granted, broken) hot water heater that was replaced with a tiny one w/o the recirculating pump that we used to have, etc. Geez, I didn’t realize how long it took to get hot water without the recirculating pump - man, what a waste of water. Anyway, for someone else to live here, the house is a big fixer-upper. There are lots of extras that we paid for to upgrade the house, but those will just be our little secret. They’re things that aren’t immediately obvious, and we’re not about to make the house more appealing to someone else.
We’ve been looking at houses in AZ, in an area that looks like it’s on its way to becoming what our area of Las Vegas is now. Right now, it’s the semi-boonies in a suburb not far from Phoenix, where the houses are a decent size with large yards, and the prices are currently 85k-95k for a single story, which would be our preference now. It would cost less than moving across the country, we’d still be able to avoid winter, my disability lawyer practices there in case I need to appeal (in general, most people are turned down on their first try for disability, but I’m hoping that my lawyer’s good reputation will help, so that the SSA won’t want to spend money on an appeal), we have a possible roommate set up to help with the rent, and we also would have help finding new doctors. It’s not as cheap (housing-wise - although it’s not far off for non fixer-uppers, as we’re currently not in any condition to work on a house) as moving to the Mid-West, but it’s also not as expensive to move our stuff, nor would our aching bodies have to deal with freezing winters. And hey, it’s cheaper to clothe yourself in t-shirts, shorts, and Crocs, than buying winter clothing and shoes. Although, it blows my chances of fireflies in my back yard. Oh, you laugh - I once almost moved to Georgia mostly because of fireflies. Well, and it was pretty there, but mostly….the fireflies.
Our goal is to eventually move closer to Leigh-Ann’s family (it’s her turn to see the little ones grow up), and we didn’t want to get there in two moves, but if we can have an intermediate move to a place with an airport, an NHL team (that is actually doing well this season!), an NFL team, a MLB team, and some colleges nearby, that’s not too bad. That’s one thing I dislike about Las Vegas - no professional sports teams. Yes, we have some minor league teams, but it just isn’t the same…and they’re not televised either. So, there are good reasons to stay (although, fewer and fewer these days) and good reasons to move.
Stay tuned for a zillion “30 Second Book Reviews”. We’ve kept our library busy. When you’re feeling crappy, books are not only handy when you’re in bed, but they’re a nice escape. Then again, I’m not sure that I could call “Lovely Bones” a nice escape. I prefer my fiction with less child rape & murder.
