My husband and I have lived in our tiny house since April 2006. It has served us well for five years, but now with our five month old boy it has become increasingly small...we're talking about less than 700 square feet for 2.5 people and three cats. Add to this the fact that my husband has to drive 35 miles to work each way and during the busy school year, this results in him not seeing our son very much. It has become painfully obvious to us that we need to move closer to my husband's work. On a whim last week we set up an appointment to view a fixer-upper in a neighboring town. This house turned out to be way more work than we would be able to tackle, plus it was a short sale with several other contracts already on the table (plus it had a basement that resembled the dungeon in "The Silence of the Lambs". We did view another house that we fell in love with that was even closer to my husband's work that seemed perfect for us. We were planning on bringing my parents to see the house and were entertaining the idea of making an offer. Out of morbid curiosity, we met with a mortgage broker to see if we could conceivably rent our house and buy this new house. It turned out that this would not be feasible given the current economic climate and that in order to move out of our tiny house, we would have to sell our tiny house.
Selling this house will be easier said than done. In our neighborhood alone there are many houses for sale at a variety of price points. Some are bank-owned foreclosures, and some are well maintained homes that the sellers are hoping to get top dollar for. When we purchased this house in 2006, it was at the height of the real estate bubble and we paid quite a bit more for this house than it is currently worth according to the county auditor. Assuming that we could sell this house for what we paid for it five years ago would be foolish. What we're hoping is that we can sell this house for what the house is currently valued at, and not have to bring too much to the table in order to unload it.
I plan to write about this process, mainly to help me vent about everything we're going through.
