Tuesday, January 13, 2009

New Home?

With the Real Estate Market the way it is across the country and particularly here in Michigan, Mike and I feel trapped more than ever in our home. When we bought it back in 2001, we got it for a steal at $142,000. There just wasn't houses available in Forest Hills (one of the top districts in MI) for that kind of money and as nice as ours is. Thank you, nasty divorce!

It was supposed to be our transition home-1st home was meant as a starting platform to get us 3-5 years. We sold our home in Kentwood, MI after about 3 years, as planned, and rolled the equity over into this one. Our current home was supposed to be on the 5-7 year, 1st child plan. Whoops...messed that up by having twins. Now what? We will have been on our current home 8 years in May and desperately need something bigger. With only 2 bedrooms upstairs, the girls have to share one and it's very small. There is another bedroom in the lower level that we use as our office, but we don't want to split the girls up on separate floors. Our garage is full, our laundry/storage room is full, our crawl space is full -AND- we have more over at Mike's parents storage facility. Geeezzzz....

We will be lucky to walk away from this home with any money afterward and are seriously considering renting it instead, in order to ride the market wave back up. We're in a hot school district for parents to get their kids into-families that might not be able to purchase our home right now but would be excited to rent it in order to get their kids into Forest Hills. It would be a gamble. We could always put it on the Market and take our chances with that as well, but we'll have to wait to move into something bigger for who knows how long. Tough choices...

Are any of you facing this dilemma? How have you handled it and what was your number one priority in making those decisions? Inquiring minds want to know....

3 comments:

Wendy said...

Not the same dilemma exactly but we are looking at selling in this market--and we HAVE to do it, and we have a timeline we have to do it by. Fortunately I don't think things are as bad here as in MI, but I'm a bit apprehensive to get a real estate agent's take on the market.

Maybe some reduction of stuff / reorganization / redecorating can make you feel like you have more space in the same place for a while? You'd likely want to do some of that to put it on the market anyway. Or you could come out and help me with mine!

Wendy

Wendy said...

Would like to find some land closer to work and sell our house. It would be nice to build a house. Unfortunately the house behind us is not selling. I am sure that is not a good sign for us either.
Someday it will workout. We are just going to wait unless we find some nice land for sale that is good. So if you see something let us know! We are always keeping our eyes open for good deals.

Ren said...

WMW-(aka Wendy #1)We have been doing the reorganization and reduction thing for the past year. It has helped a lot but not enough. We have redecorated/remodeled the entire house in the time that we have lived here and don't want to pour more money into it. Sigh. What to do....

Wendy (#2) -Building a house sounds great too! Mike and I have discussed that option but land prices haven't gone down as much as home prices. We'll keep our eyes peeled for you though!