Relocating Home, Part 2.

Continued from here.

The movers came Monday and in one very long day they packed up all our things, drove 109 miles, took a half an hour ferry ride, and unloaded everything into our new FOURTH FLOOR apartment condo. And although we had just spent the last two weekends prior either trashing, goodwilling, or craigslisting much of the crap stuff we’ve collected over the years, judging from the floor to ceiling stacks of boxes in the backroom, I think we still managed to hang on to too much.

The movers had been the one beacon of light for me during this whole relocation process, and although they were overheard saying “we can cut a lot of corners with this job” and subsequently just threw most of our stuff into cardboard boxes without even shoring everything up with the proper amount of packing paper, in the end only one bowl was lost. It’s a shame though, because I bought that bowl during a pottery sale in high school and have moved it myself umpteen times without incident, but I digress, in retrospect we’re about to lose a lot more during this whole process than a stupid bowl.

Like our house.

And our good credit.

And our pride.

In March, when Bubba was notified about the termination of his position (and then the termination of the position he was subsequently transferred to) the one thing that was for certain was that we would not be relocated to a location within reasonable commuting distance to our house.

The house we bought in 2006.

The house that we’ve literally gutted and renovated from the inside out and spent thousands of dollars doing it.

The house that has been steadily decreasing in value since we bought it, regardless of our earnest attempts to upgrade it.

The house that we only intended on living in for a few years when we decided to buy.

The house that we hoped would be a short term investment for our long term dreams.

The house that has not lived up to any of our expectations.

Once it was finally determined when and where he would be repositioned (I complained about that whole debacle here, here, here, here, and here), we were faced with either staying in our house which would require him to drive 5 hours round-trip to get to work or packing everyone up and moving closer to where his new position was located. Either option was a significant financial burden: one costing time, gas, general vehicle wear and tear; the other requiring us to try and sell our home amidst an economic crisis spurred by a crash in the housing market.

A 15 hour work day was just not acceptable for our family, so we immediately contacted our real estate agent and after explaining to her our situation, I believe the first words out of her mouth were something like: “You’re fucked.” Maybe she didn’t say that phrase exactly, but she might as well because when she told us that our home would sell for $67,000 (THOUSAND!) dollars less than what we paid for it three years earlier no other statement could have described our situation any clearer.

So what do you do when your job has been transferred and now you can’t sell your house because you owe $67,000 more than what it is worth?

You drink a lot of beer, that’s what. And when you’re in between sips you’re on the phone because someone, somewhere has got to have a solution for this mess.

We’ve called our lenders. We’ve called non-profit organizations, like HopeNow and those recommended on the HUD website. We’ve called the IRS. We’ve called a lawyer. And thus far, all that anyone can tell us is that there are endless possibilities with endless results. But no one can answer any questions we have that are specific to our situation or mortgage, even the lawyer we hired for $250 an hour.

No one seems to know what will happen because all of the power is in the hands of the banks and apparently the banks are just making up the rules as they go along.

Read: We’re fucked.

The most common options suggested are to rent out the house, to modify or refinance the terms of our mortgage, or to apply for a short sale or deed-in-lieu or foreclosure. We briefly entertained the idea of renting our house out; however, a quick check through Craigslist revealed that similar homes were renting for about $400 less than our mortgage, even more if we were to have it managed by a property management company since we would be living 3 hours away from the property. And we’re not landlords. Regardless, renting it out for less than our mortgage would not remedy the fact that our house is $67,000 underwater — no matter how long we were to rent it out — it would only buy more time to determine if the market is ever going return to the (now) clearly, overinflated price, that we paid for the home in 2006.

We looked at refinancing or modifying our mortgage through our lenders. Unfortunately, we are not eligible for either of Obama’s Making Home Affordable plans because we are TOO MUCH underwater (?@!?!?!) and because our home is no longer our primary residence since the job transfer.

We thought about a short sale but could not justify the time and emotion required for a process that was tedious and dependent upon too many variable factors including: paying a Real Estate Agent to list it and finding a buyer, and then submitting the offer to the banks who would either approve or disapprove the offer which according to them could take upwards of 3 months. And then, AFTER ALL THAT, we would still be responsible for the amount not covered by the short sale and considering our Real Estate Agent already told us she would list our home for $67,000 less than what we paid for it based on comparable sales, the costs did not justify the means.

At this time, our only two remaining options are a deed-in-lieu or, simply, a foreclosure. But we have many, many more conversations with the banks ahead of us before any settlement will be reached and, most importantly, before any closure can begin.

To be continued . . .