Our home is no longer truly “under water,” but the irony is that now I feel like it is. (See my previous Vent Tunnel).
We bought our home in June 2008, just a month before the market completely crashed. At the time we simply felt lucky that we were able to sell our starter home for such a profit. We bought for $195k, which was the median price in Portland back in 2004, and we sold for $265k. We felt like we put a lot of sweat equity into the yard and some cash into making it much energy efficient, but it was still a sweet return on investment.
We poured every penny of profit into our next home, which we bought for $422k at the height of the bubble. Even though it wasn’t a bargain, we felt very lucky to have managed the move when we did. Some of our neighbors who listed just after us had their homes sit on the market all summer never to sell, and two years later we saw a very similar house around the corner from our old place on the market for $190k. Boy am I glad we’re past those times.
In December 2010, just over a year after moving in, we decided to refinance, which required an appraisal. It came in very low, $372k, a full $50k below what we bought our place for. At the time we took this news in stride, simply feeling grateful for just owning (or rather being able to buy) our home during such unsteady financial times . We also didn’t plan on moving in the foreseeable future, so it didn’t feel like a problem as long as we were happy in our home and able to pay the mortgage.
In the years since, I’ve been glad to see the market improve but honestly haven’t given much thought to the value of our home. Yet, after going house shopping for Miel in early fall, we started seriously considering moving, even to the point of finding a four bedroom place near Irving Park that we felt would be perfect us. So, we started taking steps to list our place, but were stopped in our tracks.
We were honestly shocked when our Realtor informed us that our house should be listed for $450k (which still feels very conservative). Yet, the comparative market value is really hard run since there aren’t many home like ours so close-in (and the fact that there are still plenty of fixers in our neighborhood doesn’t help). Zillow puts our place at $497k, and we frankly feel it’s worth that.
It’s not the estimated of our home that makes me suddenly feel under water, it’s the fact that in order for us to keep our current mortgage we could only afford a place for around $430k, when had been hoping to buy for about $650k. Plus, we just put on a new roof for $10k and our other repairs and upgrades at least total that much. So, that’s why the idea of putting our place on the market for $450 feels like a slap in the face.
After a month, I’m finally able to move past this feeling of defeat (it didn’t help that after paying several thousand trying to make our basement dry, it flooded worse than ever with the rains…ugh). Now I’m feeling reinspired, and ready to get to work on some improvements that will in fact improve our home’s value.
Has your home ever been under water?
How did you get past that sinking feeling?
Darcy