I need real estate advice, please

[persa]

Hi guys, I need help thinking this through. In my intro, I mentioned we bought a house last summer and that I didn't like my house. Well, we might be selling it.

Background: after all the drama of our crappy realtor and losing the first house I loved way back when, I realized that I made a huge mistake in going along with buying this house. I should have spoken up about all my hesitations and not just acquiesced.

The things I didn't like about it when we looked at it, I dislike even more now. I love the area though and love having a pool (other than the expense) but the house itself just doesn't feel like home to me and never will. My husband likes the house well enough, especially if we did stuff to it to improve it but I think that putting even more money into a house we paid so much for would make me "resent" the house even more, does that make sense?

To be honest, it's a beautiful house with a beautiful yard and a high end kitchen and everyone who comes here loves the house but I have pretty much hated it since we've lived here.

So we need to decide our plan of attack here. Ideally we'd close on the sale of this house first before buying another so we could use the money towards a new down payment. Unfortunately, we are going to lose money no matter what. Our other concerns are it being late in the summer and having enough traffic to find a seller and having enough inventory of houses to choose from.

Option A: put the house on the market in the next couple of weeks and look for another house right away but if we don't find one, we're thinking we'd move into a rental or a big apartment for however long it takes to find another house. Not ideal but it would be better not to rush but the rental market is expensive around here (Austin)

Option B: wait till next spring/summer to list the house for better traffic and inventory. My least favorite since I don't know if I can handle it for that long.

Option C would be to look at houses now and make an offer if we find one and if it's accepted, then hustle to get this house sold but stress-wise and financially, it's probably not a great idea.

I just want a house that feels like home.

What say you guys? Feel free to ask clarifying questions or ask me why or tell me I'm being such a brat about this.

[munkii]

What do you hate about your house so much that makes you question whether or not you can handle living in it?

[darby]

Jul 19, 2013 22:24:54 GMT -5 munkii said:

What do you hate about your house so much that makes you question whether or not you can handle living in it?

This is what I'm wondering as well...

[kaylie]

Add a third person to the list of people wondering "wow, what could make a house that bad?"

Honestly, unless you've got money to burn I would suck it up. It's not cheap to sell a house and the way you described it, it doesn't sound like there is anything negatively affecting your quality life.

[TBM]

Jul 20, 2013 5:14:10 GMT -5 kaylie said:

Honestly, unless you've got money to burn I would suck it up. It's not cheap to sell a house and the way you described it, it doesn't sound like there is anything negatively affecting your quality life.

How can living somewhere that you hate not affect the quality of your life negatively?   Especially if it is something that you didn't want to begin with. 

It is one thing if it is something fixable that you can put with until you can fix it (and it is worth it to spend the money to fix it), but if it can't be changed, or can't be changed for a long time,  it will just gnaw away at you every time you see it.  I can see it being a cause of frustration and resentment that spills over to other areas of your life. 



I would like to know what it is that you hate.  Maybe we can help come up with solutions.  A new perspective.

[Deleted]

Jul 20, 2013 6:39:09 GMT -5 TBM said:

Jul 20, 2013 5:14:10 GMT -5 kaylie said:

Honestly, unless you've got money to burn I would suck it up. It's not cheap to sell a house and the way you described it, it doesn't sound like there is anything negatively affecting your quality life.

How can living somewhere that you hate not affect the quality of your life negatively?   Especially if it is something that you didn't want to begin with. 

It is one thing if it is something fixable that you can put with until you can fix it (and it is worth it to spend the money to fix it), but if it can't be changed, or can't be changed for a long time,  it will just gnaw away at you every time you see it.  I can see it being a cause of frustration and resentment that spills over to other areas of your life. 



I would like to know what it is that you hate.  Maybe we can help come up with solutions.  A new perspective.

I think we're all just confused because she literally hates a house she's hasn't lived in for long. It's like she's not giving it a fair chance because she hated from the second she bought it. I can understand a house "not for you" negatively impacting life for sure, but what makes a house so bad that you'd move to apt. and lose a ton of money on.  I guess I'm personally confused because I can't imagine have such distaste for a house unless it's haunted or the roof is falling in on me.

OP: I'd try it out for awhile, work on the changes and see what happens. Put a positive spin on it, give it your best shot, you may never know. If you still hate it in a year, find something else. I just can't imagine losing all that money on a house you never really tried. I know it's hard not to love where you live, but make it personal/make it yours and then go from there. I know a lot of people live in places they don't necessarily love, but they come to love (or at least like them) because it's their home, their stuff, their memories, their changes etc.

[auntie]

Where is your DH in all this. 

Re-selling is going to be a loss that impacts you both. Is that loss a minor blip in your budget or is this decision going to impact your quality of life for years to come. Your inability to see this as a "home" is worrisome. I get that it isn't your ideal forever home, but any place you and your loved ones share is by definition "home".

[TBM]

Jul 20, 2013 7:44:26 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

Jul 20, 2013 6:39:09 GMT -5 TBM said:

How can living somewhere that you hate not affect the quality of your life negatively?   Especially if it is something that you didn't want to begin with. 

It is one thing if it is something fixable that you can put with until you can fix it (and it is worth it to spend the money to fix it), but if it can't be changed, or can't be changed for a long time,  it will just gnaw away at you every time you see it.  I can see it being a cause of frustration and resentment that spills over to other areas of your life. 



I would like to know what it is that you hate.  Maybe we can help come up with solutions.  A new perspective.

I think we're all just confused because she literally hates a house she's never lived in. I can understand a house "not for you" negatively impacting life for sure, but she hasn't even lived there yet. I guess I'm personally confused because I can't imagine have such distaste for a house unless it's haunted or the roof is falling in on me.

OP: I'd try it out for awhile and see what happens. Put a positive spin on it, give it your best shot, you may never know. If you still hate it in a year, find something else. I just can't imagine losing all that money on a house you never really tried. I know it's hard not to love where you live, but make it personal/make it yours and then go from there. I know a lot of people live in places they don't necessarily love, but they come to love (or at least like them) because it's their home, their stuff, their memories, their changes etc.

Where did it say that hadn't lived there yet?   She bought it a year ago, said she loves the area and loves having a pool, but the house doesn't feel like home.  Sounds like she lives there to me.

[SusanBAnthony]

We are in the same place, except I love the house and hate the neighborhood.

I knew I hated the neighborhood, but it was all we could afford without majorly comprising what we wanted.

We just can't afford to take the financial hit so we are waiting a couple years. For us that is also bc we don't know if we will live here forever, so the last thing I want to do is move and then relocate a year later.

It is hard for me bc like you said, I don't want to spend money improving things, which brings me happiness, only to turn around and sell. We will see what happens. Depending on what the market does, we may be stuck here. Some days I am ok with that, some days I have meltdowns.

[kermit]

A few years ago I bought a house that I knew I shouldn't have, for various reasons. I hated it as soon as I moved in and ended up selling a year later. The house was nice enough but it was so far away from everything and I felt so isolated. It really was best for my mental health that I moved. I sold by owner so pretty much broke even, maybe lost a few thousand. I found an apartment to live in temporarily, which was good because it took longer to find another house than I thought it would, but being in a month to month lease, I didn't feel pressured to find anything.

[Deleted]

Jul 20, 2013 7:49:07 GMT -5 TBM said:

Jul 20, 2013 7:44:26 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

I think we're all just confused because she literally hates a house she's never lived in. I can understand a house "not for you" negatively impacting life for sure, but she hasn't even lived there yet. I guess I'm personally confused because I can't imagine have such distaste for a house unless it's haunted or the roof is falling in on me.

OP: I'd try it out for awhile and see what happens. Put a positive spin on it, give it your best shot, you may never know. If you still hate it in a year, find something else. I just can't imagine losing all that money on a house you never really tried. I know it's hard not to love where you live, but make it personal/make it yours and then go from there. I know a lot of people live in places they don't necessarily love, but they come to love (or at least like them) because it's their home, their stuff, their memories, their changes etc.

Where did it say that hadn't lived there yet?   She bout it a year ago, said she loves the area and loves having a pool, but the house doesn't feel like home.  Sounds like she lives there to me.

I just edited. From her second part of her post, I took "sell it right away" as she'd never lived there.
Not enough coffee today. Read the whole thing wrong.

I still can't imagine what would be so wrong with a house that my life is entirely negative because of it though.

[persa]

Hi everyone, sorry to post and run last night.

Here's the thing: you know how if you love your house, you practically beam when people ask you about your house or you're so happy to come home to it? I NEVER feel that way about my house. I see people talking about how much they love their house and lighting up about it and I've never once done that...other than the area and the pool and maybe my fancy stove and my double shower, which I do love. I might be being a brat about this whole thing but I've been depressed all year and I work too effing hard to not enjoy coming home to something that I love. When I said I "can't handle it" I'm being slightly tongue in cheek/drama queen-ish


Other points to clarify:
-I've lived there for a year already and have been trying to "make a go at it" this whole time, including furnishing and some light fixtures and fans. We haven't done any decorating and I'm so uninspired to do it because of my shitty feelings about the house.
-What I don't like:
*kitchen is feature rich but poorly laid out and a little cramped to where you can barely have 2 people in there without getting in each others way.
*Lot is big, too big really but still not as functional as I'd like: sloped yard, have to walk past the pool to get there, one completely unused area, garden is not in a functional place. I think I would like a smaller, flatter yard, one that I can look out the window or back door and see my kid playing the back
*Front entrance is in a hallway by the bedrooms and bedrooms are right by the living room so you have to be quiet when you're in there
*3rd bedroom is really more of a office/mancave so it feels weird to think of putting a kid in there one day and the 4th bedroom wouldn't make a good kid's room because it's on the other side of the house and the bathroom is the only guest bathroom.
* by "location" which I love, i meant the area of town and the neighborhood but I actually don't like my specific street. It's too wide and nobody is ever outside. I've met a couple neighbors here and there but the only one I'm on a regular chatting level with is the new one across the street.
-Husband likes the house but thinks it needs all sorts of update and renos that would cost us a lot of money and feel like bandaids to me. For example, he wants to spend 8k+ on painting and replacing baseboards in the whole house. Painting I get but not the baseboards. He also wants to reno the kitchen but that would involve adding on which would be $$$$
-money wise, we'd probably be out 40-60k and while that's a LOT of money (we're also early in the process on fertility treatments), it wouldn't ruin us.

[Deleted]

Okay. I see what you mean much more.
If it means that much to you, and you're not worried about the finances then sell.

However, I also think you should think long and hard about the "grass is greener." Is there going to be a house you ever truly love, for example? If you're expecting to love every single thing about your house, it's not going to happen. Even people who beam about their house have issues with it. I'm one of them. I love my house for a lot of reasons, I'll happily tell you about. However, I can also list off about 15 other things I'd do different/change/don't like but live with it. It's real life and sometimes I think the TV/internet/society get us so wrapped up in "You must love all the things. If you don't move on." It's just not reality usually.

I'm not necessarily saying that's what you're doing, just something more to think about.

[penguin23]

I'm sorry you are having such a hard time liking your house. If I were you, I would try to suck it up and wait until next year, or even another year or two to see if it grows on you. I just bought a house last year, and although I don't love it and certainly don't intend to stay here forever, it is in a fantastic town with great schools and a good neighborhood. I haven't met a ton of neighbors either, since we are the first house on the street, but it takes time. The neighbors I have met was because either my son ran in their yard and from walking down the street.

I don't think painting the house is unreasonable either. Would you need to paint it to sell anyway? We painted the whole house before we moved in and it made a HUGE difference. Also, if you're undergoing fertility treatments, you might want to wait before buying another home so you can figure out your needs. What if you guys have triplets? that might change your needs for your next home, especially if you are looking for it to be a forever home.

[kaylie]

I think I was confused because her first post said it was a beautiful house in a great area with a beautiful yard and a high end kitchen. Ummm, what’s to hate?

OP, have you checked out your area to see if you can find a property in your price range that would make you happy? If you can afford to take the hit, go for it now before interest rates climb higher.

It sounds like you can’t see yourself in this house long term and don’t want to invest any more than you already have, which is a good call if you’re going to move.

FTR, even though I like my house I don’t light up or beam when I talk about it. To me, it’s a house that gives me a place to live, build equity and take a decent income tax deduction.

[ktzmoh]

Im sorry you are hating the house, and I'm really sorry about the fertility problems. To an outsider, it sounds like you have some heavy stuff going on this past year and maybe your frustration is being directed at the house.

I worry that this is a case of the grass is greener- you won't beam with happiness coming home to a rental, so selling quick and going to a rental wouldn't work. I think you should stay in the house while you look for your dream house- wait for it to come to you and make sure that you arent placing too many expectations on the home as a source of happiness. Who knows, maybe actively looking for a new place will help you to live in the old house without feeling too sad about it. If 40-60k isnt a prohibitive sum to you, then you can price the old house agressively as soon as you find your dream house.

Side note, I have no idea what the market is like in Austin, but we have friends that just sold a house earlier this year - they live there less than a year and walked away with well over 100k in profit. It can be done!

[pitterwoo]

On one hand, persa I feel you so much because I love nesting and home is really important to me. I know how much surroundings can impact my mood. And spaces that work well help everything flow.

On the other hand, I'm having a hard time not tearing into you because this post makes you sound like a prima donna. If you can afford to take the financial hit, there's no reason to put up with the house situation. Fine, done and done. However, if you really can't afford it then I think you need a big dose of perspective. You're talking about little things that make your home and layout less than ideal. This isn't the neighbors are drug dealers, it's a terrible school district, there are major issues that are cost prohibitive to fix, etc. I'm not saying you can't be unhappy, but make sure you do realize where your situation falls on the urgency of needing to move scale.

In addition, Dairy is very right that no house is perfect. We've had threads about what we like most/least about our homes. Even the girls with custom built homes have their dislikes. There are ALWAYS concessions that have to be made.  You aren't the first person to make a mistake with the house buying process.  There are plenty of stories here about surprise issues, contractor f-ups that can't be fixed or just buying at the wrong time and being under water.

I guess my point is that, yes if you can love your home and beam with pride about it, that's great! If you think that everyone is getting to feel that way about their home you are seriously mistaken. Do what you can to get/create a home you love, but don't trade one problem for another (debt, financial issues, another house that doesn't meet your standards).

[pitterwoo]

dup

[teeah22]

You said you haven't decorated because you're uninspired, but I don't see how an undecorated house could feel homey. How does your H feel about selling? Although 40-60k wouldn't ruin you, that's still no small sum of money to just basically waste. Are you also considering the costs associated with buying a new house, moving expenses, furnishing and decorating it? It just sounds like you made up your mind before you even moved in that you hated the house. I can see how it would suck living somewhere you don't want to live but from the way you're describing the situation, it doesn't seem like you've really even given it a chance.

This whole thread is so FWP...

[darby]

I can totally understand why a house that may look beautiful or even perfect on paper just doesn't make you happy. I also agree that the "grass is greener" is a very real possibility. My suggestion would be to hit up open houses in your area. Don't necessarily do this to look for a different house to buy, do it to get ideas for things you really love in a house. You dont need to worry about price, DH & i regularly will go to an open house selling for 4x what we could actually afford. We have come home with real life examples of things we could do in our own home for very little $ that will make a huge impact on the style or functionality of how we live & our happiness with things that aren't ideal. I also really do think paint can help make you happier with you surroundings. For me, beige walls are unthinkable & a traditional style home would depress me (even if that is someone else's idea of perfect). The flip side is that I get the amount of color I have going on in my home would give some people a headache. ;-) I guess what I'm trying to say is that nothing is ever a perfect fit without giving it your own spin on things & there may be a way to be happier with what you do have without losing or spending thousands of dollars. If you give it a little effort you may see you really do love your home....or at least you will know you tried & it still doesn't work for you. Then it's time to sell.

[new2this]

Ditto everyone else. If the loss isn't that big to you, yeah, go ahead and find something new and sell this house. If the cost is an issue I think it would be best to try to wait it out and find something you really love in a year or two. I will say though that you might want to consider the IF side of things. If you don't get pregnant would you still want the same style and type of house? Or will your financial standpoint change things? DH and I went through IF treatments from June 2012 until January 2013. We did TI, IUI, and eventually IVF. In 6 cycles we dropped close to 40,000 in treatments - all out of pocket. It REALLY changed our finances. While I don't LOVE some big issues with our house we didn't and won't move because of finances which are directly related to our expensive treatments.

[Doggy Mommy]

If you were talking about taking a small loss or breaking even or if there were huge problems with your house (like drive-by shootings), I'd say go for it, but 40-60 thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of money. I could not imagine throwing away TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS because my street was too wide and other minor issues. I think you should decorate your house to make it feel like a home and stay there for a while. You said, "it's a beautiful house with a beautiful yard and a high end kitchen and everyone who comes here loves the house" - this does not sound like it's worth losing such a huge amount of money.

[persa]

I have to go to work now but I'll try to respond in depth later. People have brought up points that I either want to clarify or discuss further. Thanks for the replies so far.

[heygrey]

i'm sorry. if you're not willing to put a bit of money into sprucing it up and you haven't tried to decorate you're not really trying to like it.

granted, i live in a rented apartment, but there is definitely stuff about this place that i don't love. sometimes i day dream of packing up and finding a better place to live, but for the betterment of our financial future we suck it up and stay. and i work hard to decorate and make this place feel like home. even the aspects that i really don't like are a lot more tolerable when i try to work with them. and in the three years we've lived here, i have come to really love a lot of things about our space, but it definitely took some work!

and listing complaints about the width of the street and your neighbors never being outside... yeah. all i'm hearing is a really high maintenance personality. you may not be at all, but that's not coming across in your post.

[alf17]

Two years ago my DD and family sold their first house that they loved to move to a more family friendly neighbor. They moved in with us for 5 months while they looked. They finally found a house well below their price range in a great neighborhood (mine) that had some nice updates. However, after they bought it, she realized the some of the updates were not done all that well. Her oversized dishes did not fit in her cabinets and there were too few of them. Her furniture didn't fit the rooms. She was upset for a bit. She got over it and made the house her own the best she could. She loves the neighborhood and the fact that she could stay home after having baby #2. They are finishing the basement and then will decide if the house will work. If not, in a few years they will look for something else.

I can understand wanting to love your home. That is the way I roll.  Good luck with whatever you decide.

[julygal]

Look I can understand how your environment affects you. If you SAH then its where you spend most of your time. If you work, then you want to come home to an environment that relaxes you. You acknowledge you got caught up in the home buying process, didn't voice your hesitations and now every day you are reminded of your mistake. Not knowing you, I think it is easy in that situation to ruminate and dwell on the mistake instead of progressing past it. It seems like you are ready to change and see moving as the only solution; where it is clear that most of us would attempt to make this work and wait it out instead of losing thousands of dollars. I also agree with PPs that commented that there seems to be a lot going on in your life between the house, fertility treatments, feeling depressed for a year, etc. Really consider if the house is the source of that feeling of depression or if the house is just something easy to target. I'd hate for you to sell, move and find that it doesn't fix the problem. Back to your original question, ultimately you have to do what's right for you, and if its moving out, then I think you can wait until the spring when the market will give you more options.

[persa]

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond, I'm hardly ever on the boards other than on the phone and it was too hard to reply that way.

@justdairy, I'm not expecting to love every single thing, that would be unreasonable, though it seems lots of folks already think I'm unreasonable, haha. But you can say "I love my house for a lot of reasons" and I can't say that. "Hate" is too strong a word...it's really that I just don't like the house and for the expense of the house, both cost and expense, I feel like I should love it or at least really really like it, does that make sense? And for what my H wants to do to it to make it work, we'd be talking 10's of thousands of dollars. @ merida, I'm glad that your overall emotion related to your house is positive as well. I think I've given the impression that I feel like the house has to be perfect....I just want it to be perfect (or fabulous, or great, or whatever word) for us, the way I felt about my previous 2 homes, which were not "perfect" by any stretch but I LOVED those houses (owned pre-husband and baby)

penguin23, I don't think we need to paint it, it's just a boring beige-y color. It would maybe look better with better paint colors but I don't think I'd spend the money on the baseboards. As for the fertility treatments, if we ended up with twins (or more), we would DEFINITELY have to buy a new house because this house would not work at all. Regardless, I think we'd still be ok as long as we had at least 4 bedrooms but I'd love to have a study/office space no matter where we are. We are really bad with mail and papers and could really use a dedicated space for it, even a small space.

ktzmoh, the other stuff doesn't help, that's for sure, and is a component of the blues. I think I would see a rental as being a means to an end, I don't really expect to be happy in a rental. We would love to just find a house and then sell this one since that would be the easiest but financially, it would probably be better for us to sell it to have a sizeable down payment when we're ready to buy. We dropped so much money on the DP on this house and it's been so expensive that we don't have that much saved up for a DP...and we may have to use it towards baby #2. The only other way would be if my IL's loaned us the DP money until the house sold and we could pay them back at closing but I don't think we would ask them to do that.

@pitterwoo, I hear what you're saying and I'm hoping that what I posted in reply to @justdairy and ktzmoh. The financial stuff, well it's complicated because of the IF stuff and what I just stated in the paragraph above in reply to ktzmoh. And frankly, this house is expensive and part of me posting here was to try to think through the process, though I don't think I was clear about that being an objective. I will disagree with you that it's little things about the house that make it less than ideal but that may be my fault in not describing things well.

teeah22, yes, we've thought about the expenses and we've bought furniture and rugs and some fixtures but just don't have anything on the walls but we're notorious for taking a long time to get wall décor up. And I would say that most of the Home and Garden board threads are "so FWP", no?

darby, those are good ideas.

FormerlyRR, I've been wanting to buy some inexpensive décor stuff recently since I figure we'll have to do it for staging purposes anyway and why not enjoy them now. Haven't found anything that we like enough yet but I'm still looking.

new2this, if the IF treatments don't work, the only thing that would foreseeably change is that we wouldn't need 4 BR and study, we could get away with 3 BR and a study.

cookie'smom, yes, it is beautiful, etc etc, like I said...but those people don't have to live here and pay for the expenses associated with it. I'm reminded of when my cousin's owned this BEAUTIFUL house on a hill in austin and then they sold it for a smaller home in a less fancy neighborhood and no one could understand why...now I understand it.

heygrey, agree, I sound super high maintenance in this post

alf17, thanks. I will say that staying in this house will guarantee that I will have to work full time for many many years

julygal, the house is a big part of the overall picture rather than the target of my frustrations, just to clarify. And I'm thinking more and more that spring may be a better time to jump into the possibility of a move.

nursecramer, H doesn't totally agree but he gets why I'm frustrated, or at least he's starting to. He would like to get a move on with whatever we decide but we've decided to hold off on any big moves with the house until we sort out the IF stuff so we can figure out how we're going to shift around the money we do have to pay for it. At least, that's what I've convinced him to do for now and he agrees.

I think I addressed most people's thoughts. I'm not sure if that makes anyone think I'm any less of spoiled brat/high maintenance though

[sillygoosegirl]

Option B seems like the only thing that makes sense to me. I seriously doubt this house will really make you that much more unhappy than a rental in a tight and expensive market when you are trying to save up for the next house. You'll get a better price and better options on your next house if you give it until the spring, plus there's the factor of moving twice. It seems to me like the only real advantage to selling right this instant is that you don't trust your husband to follow through on selling the house in the spring.

Other possible options include putting your house up for sale, but not accepting an offer unless you find another house you want to buy (you get a couple days to do that before you have to respond to offers), or making offers on other houses but making them contingent on finding a buyer for your current house. Both of those sound pretty stressful to me, but the ARE options.

[AmyRI]

I don't understand why you're willing to lose tens of thousands of dollars to sell, then buy a new house, and spend thousands to decorate that house but you're unwilling to put any money into your current house. I would still at least stay put through the spring. Instead of selling for a loss and dealing with a rental, why not just deal with the house you're in while you build equity and a DP and then sell/buy later? Why do you have to have your forever home right.this.minute?

I agree with your DH to sort out the IF stuff. In the grand scheme of life, children matter more than decor. Once things settle down with that, you'll have a more complete financial picture and a better idea of what your forever home needs to look like.

And you're right, you still sound like a spoiled brat. We are not in our forever home. We have been there 5 years and we still have a mile long To-Do list. Half the rooms still don't have any art on the walls. When I get discouraged, I just focus on what's happening inside the house with my family instead of dwelling on what would make the house better.

[persa]

AmyRI, I think you misread. I actually convinced HIM to wait until we sort out the fertility stuff before we make any big moves, not the other way around. He wanted to go ahead and take some sort of action now.

Anyway, right now the plan is to wait a little while longer, probably the late spring, to make any moves. We'll know how the IF stuff turns out and there will be more inventory to choose from and more buyers looking for houses then. And who knows, maybe I'll magically like my house by then.