Posted by vicki on December 04, 2000 at 24:46:10:
Help! Want some advice.
June of 1991, my husband and I bought our first home. A two bedroom, 1 bath, 1 car garage, w/ workshop in nice, post-war neighborhood near University. SMALL – less than 900 sq/ft! Our hope was to gain some equity in about five years then move up to a nicer 3/2/2.
NO DEAL! The market took a deep dive for eight years and so did our dream.
In '93 we refinanced to lower our payments, but still today can’t rent the home to break-even point.
Now we have two children and have outgrown this little home. My kitchen in particular drives me MAD . . . it’s so small! I’m able to stand in one place and touch ALL the appliances! Last year we considered giving our home away just to get out from under it. The loan is assumable and we ran an ad… TAKE OVER LOAN! We got a few flakey responses. We kept the home.
The market has picked up this year about 15%. A heavily remodeled home across the street sold three months ago for $105,000. We bought at $98,500, our balance today is $89,000. If we could sell our house now for $105K… we could get about $10,000 out of it after realtor’s commission.
We’re perplexed. The house is too small, but we’re almost a third of the way through this loan!
HELP! DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS?? CAN THIS LEMON (somehow) BE TURNED INTO LEMONADE??