Well, we did it...we closed on our townhouse! After four years (including the past 1 1/2+ that we have not even lived in the thing), our townhouse now has a new owner. We sold the house via a "short sale," but let me tell you there was nothing short about the process. A little history? Check out this (rough, and awfully long) timeline:
Sept. 2009: I'm pregnant, and my dad suggests we start looking for a bigger, better house...he plans to buy our townhouse and use it as a rental property...SCORE! I start looking immediately
Nov. 2009: we find a beautiful ranch that we are in love with and put in an offer...it is a short sale, so our agent tells us we will probably have quite awhile to wait (understatement)
December 2009: progress is being made on ranch, so our agent suggests we go ahead and get dad closed on townhouse so we are ready to roll when it's time
***this is where our major problems arose, as there were multiple issues with dad buying our townhouse (it didn't appraise for what we still owed, dad had to bring beaucoup bucks because it was a second property, etc)
early January 2010: dad decided he can't buy townhouse after all...major decisions need to be made
late January 2010: after much debate and discussion, Josh and I (probably more me) want to proceed with ranch, so we put the town house up for sale (at the price we owed on it...yikes)
early Feb. 2010: people have been looking at townhouse, and we get word that bank has approved ranch...NO WAY!
Feb. 20, 2010: we move into ranch!!! people happen to be coming by townhouse on moving day for their second and third look (respectively)...both comment that they no longer have interest in the place after seeing it with no furniture...UH OH!
Feb-Jul, 2010: house still on market, no offers, decide to remove it and stop making payments!
late August 2010: bank agrees we can list it as short sale (amazing what happens when you stop making payments, huh?!?)
Sept. 2010: OFFER!
Nov. 2010: people remove offer because process taking too long
Nov. 2010-Mar. 2011: not getting any additional offers, terrible agent doesn't think maybe we should lower asking price
Mar. 2011: terrible agent fired, price lowered, get offer within two days
June 2011: bank comes back and approves
June 30, 2011: we closed
Obviously, we had different choices along the way, and some would argue that we should have stayed in the townhouse when my dad's offer to buy it fell through (including my husband), but part of the problem with buying a house in 2007 when prices were at their peak is that I don't know if that townhouse will ever be worth the price we paid for it again. And because our interest rate was so high as well (woo hoo 2007), we could not have rented the place without taking a significant loss each month either.
Overall, I'm happy we made the choice we did...sure my credit took a hit for a few years (although Josh's did not because I bought the house by myself one month before we were married), but in the end, our growing family needed more room and at the rate we're going, we certainly didn't have time for the market to recover!
My dad is keen on telling me that a house is an investment, so obviously in that respect, we failed miserably! But I happen to believe that the investment is completely secondary to the memories that house gives you. In that respect, our little townhouse did us very well.
We left for our honeymoon from that house:
We hosted our first Thanksgiving there (yep 18 people crammed into that tiny space):
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| that's Josh and me prepping |
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| that's my dad playing Guitar Hero! |
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| melt...he couldn't even climb that one brink when he first got there! |
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| before |
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| after |
And we celebrated our last Christmas as a family of 3:
Yep, it was a good house to us. Although, I am happy to say goodbye:) And after a visit this weekend that involved Colton almost tumbling down the stairs and Chipper busting out the storm door and running away temporarily, I can most certainly say we made the right choice!
Thanks for listening to me ramble and reminisce. Anybody else out there been through a short sale (how ironic is that name) and live to talk about it too?
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Ugh!!! I totally have wondered why they were called short sales too! We purchased our house last summer via one with lots of headaches! I'm surprised the bank let yours go so long, ours would have been a foreclosure a week after we settled if we hadn't made it to settlement when we did!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on finally being free from it!!! :-)