neux shakin' it like a digital picture

As most of my readers know, Elizebeth and I decided to move forward with some new construction back in December. We’ve been plotting to move into a house closer to Microsoft (and civilization) for a long time. Elizebeth found an unbelievable home for a relatively good price in Woodinville. This home had everything we needed to bring up our children, live beyond comfortably and be in such a wonderful neighborhood.

The plan for moving in seemed perfect. We’d move into Elizebeth’s mom’s condo, sell our Snohomish Townhouse and basically keep the money from the equity in savings and keep adding what normally would be mortgage into savings too. When the house was ready, mid May, then we’d have a ton of cash in the bank and paying for the new mortgage payments would be easy. Credit and debt to income ratio wise I was in really good shape, preapproved for everything, etc. There was nothing stopping this plan.

In January I busted my butt to clear out our townhouse, paint rooms and clean it so it would be ready for sale. This was a very difficult job and consumed all of my extra time and energy for a couple weeks. Because Elizebeth had a broken wrist she was unable to contribute as much as she wanted, so the job was pretty much on me (I did have helpers from time to time - thanks!).

The townhouse went on the market the 3rd week of January and I totally thought it would sell overnight. After all, the exact same unit, but less nice, sold in August within like 3 days. To our horror and shock it never sold. The amount of traffic to it was close to nothing. I didn’t understand. Then I here reports that the entire north-end had pretty much slumped and that nothing was selling. Made me feel a little better, but it still sucked.

So we took it off the market about 3 weeks ago so we could rent it out. About the same time a billion houses around us went up for sale (nothing sold yet). We got a lot of renter traffic and even got someone to write a deposit check and sign the papers who wanted to move in immediately… but they promised to look at one house and would call us within 1 hour to say if they took that and asked us to rip up the check, etc. Yeah - you guessed it. 1 hour later they called to say the house they found was only $500 / month and they’d be taking that. I was actually depressed for a couple hours.

Ok ok, it gets worse. Within the last few months the entire mortgage industry has been turned inside out because of some federal audits of the big mortgage companies investigating “dirty” loans (loans given to people who can’t afford them). New Century, one of the biggest, was forced to close its doors. I think a few others too. But this caused a ripple effect with all the banks and everyone adopted new guidelines because they didn’t want to be audited and shutdown. Long story short, the loan that was fairly easy to get was now difficult to get. Yes I got a loan but the rates were astronomical. Our mortgage payment would have been $1500 more than we were expecting to pay. Considering that moving up to a larger mortgage from our town house was financially shocking enough, there was no way we could sustain such a big bill each month.

So as of today we backed out of the house. I am totally heartbroken. Elizebeth is grieving like I’ve never seen her. I was so emotionally invested in this place. I visited the construction site 2-3 times per week to see the progress. I’ve never been so excited for something like this before. So to back out was totally heart wrenching. What’s also lame is that the $7000+ I put into the house already for upgrades will not be returned to me.

On Thursday I’m renting a moving truck and with the help of friends will empty out our storage facility and load it into our townhouse… which I’m a bit excited to return to. Living at my mother-in-laws while may seem like a paradise is actually quite challenging. Nothing wrong with Carolyn and the appreciation for her letting us move in and deal with us is a mile high, but having 3 adults and 2 children running around in an 800 sqft condo, sleeping on a recliner and not with my beloved wife and simply not being in your own home is quite difficult. So I look forward to moving back into our spacious 1905 sqft townhouse where the girls have their own rooms again and I can sleep in my bed! Not to mention I’ll have a place to do my own thing.

So while this is a major disappointment we will be ok. There has been a reoccurring theme in my life: God closes doors so another one can be opened. The one He opens has always been better. Our goal is to buy a house in about 1 year.

Sean.

PS if you want to help move on Thursday, I’ll buy dinner! Call me!