Ok now what?

[TheWife]

So, yes I haven't been around much. We had sold our house, we wouldn't be able to afford it on dh's (future) instructor's salary so we decided to sell it. So it sold, and the people said they were going to close on Aug 5th, so we moved out on the first. We made sure their buyers on their house had done an appraisal, inspection, and preapproval, and they also had the same thing on our house. So it was supposed to be just a matter of paperwork....long story short, we moved out, we are in a 1 year lease in an apt, and the buyers backed out about 10 days ago. So dh had to stop flight training and get another job so we can pay mortgage and rent. So now, we are facing Sept mortgage, after already having to pay Aug which we didn't think we'd have to. Our choices now, after 10 days of no other interested people (which is so sad because we had 3 offers within the first week! Now nothing!) so now we can either sign with an agent and we will make absolutely nothing after 4 years of payments and $4K we put into the basement. Or we can put an ad in the paper for a few hundred, but if it doesn't work we are back to getting an agent and out a few more hundred on top of it. Or we could look at renting it which I really didn't want to do because it scares me that someone will trash it, but if we found good tenants then at least maybe we'd have some more equity by the time we did sell it maybe in a few years. Or we could move back, try to get out of our lease, and dh can pretty much forget flying cause he'll have to work too much just to pay for our house. Any thoughts??

[rgphib]

Honestly, after going through that selling on your own, for the extra security I would get an agent. It might not be as bad as you think when all is said and done.

Good luck, I hope everything works out in the end.

[jakenash]

WOW!!!! Michelle, that really stinks!!! I'm so sorry. You are in Utah, so I think you kinda have an advantage at finding someone who won't trash the house, you know, you probably won't have any druggies or anything like that. I would look into a bit more.

I'm sorry, I hope everything works out!!!!

[TheWife]

That would be the logical assumption but my mom had a house here that she wanted to sell, and offered a former bishop a lease w/ an option to buy, they had $10K up front for the down, by the time all was said and done, their perfect renters trashed the house to the tune of about $40K, and they skipped town owing her over $30K just in rent, nevermind the house damage. So that kind of has me real leary. And Utah is going down hill fast, especially Utah County. I can't believe the places that were available for rent, they were disgusting. Totally trashed run down drug neighbor hoods were charging $800 a month for rent. I think we are going to have to end up listing with an agent, which makes me just plain ill. We paid on that mortgage for 4 years, and an agent will walk in, sell it, and get $5K and we get nothing. Nice. If it weren't for these jackasses that we sold it to in the first place, that would have been our $5K, plus we wouldn't have lost another $2K in paying mortgages and rent! Sometimes I just really hate people.

[Kristie]

a bishop did that? did she take any legal action after that?

did you by chance get the name/numbers of the other offers - you could always call them back and tell them the original buyer dropped out! didn't you have them put down earnest money?

if that doesn't work, I'd get it listed with an agent...your already out of the house, it'd be a pain and extra $$ to have to move back in and finding the perfect renter can be difficult if your picky! it doesn't seem like there's much you can do if you want to sell the house (unless you take an expedited real estate course and become an agent).

Sorry your having such troubles!!

[TheWife]

We did get earnest money, $500. But their appraisal came in way low so we agreed to split the cost of a new one, and it came back where we expected it to. Well, after she fought me over the earnest money she refused to pay me back for the appraisal. So total, we got $200 out of it, and lost way way more than that. We signed with an agent this morning, he agreed to do our side for $1000, and 2.5% to the buyer's agent. We are PRAYING someone still finds it that doesn't have an agent because then we are only out $1000 instead of that plus the 2.5% (which is like $4500). We still won't make much either way though. Oh well. Guess all first time home buyers/sellers go through a learning process. And dh is totally pushing me to become an agent! LOL. He's like "geez, it's like legal robbery, why don't you do that hun?" LOL.

[Kristie]

you could, they have expedited real estate courses out there.. i think it only takes 6 weeks or something.

[roz]

I am so sorry you had to go through this. Home transactions should be the best experience and usually turn out to be horror stories.

If you know the area and are aggressive about making contacts, RE can be a lucrative business. You should consider it because you work on your own time!

[TheWife]

The biggest reason dh wants me to look into it, (I wouldn't be able to finish in time for our house probably) but his dad owns some commercial property he wants to sell, but hasn't yet cause he is so sick about handing over $70K to a realtor. But if I could do it....it would save him all that!

[Kristie]

whew.. dealing with commercial property is entirely different from residential though. your talking about dealing with developers and they can be very hard to work with. Us site development/land development engineers call that "playing hardball" cuz if they can steal from you, they will and then they'll build 1/4 acre lots for $300,000 a pop and will line their pockets with boat loads of cash.

if you don't have the gumption of playing that type of hard ball - have the FIL get a realtor that can because that'll probably actually save him from giving the land away...