wistful for home and community

September 7, 2007 | Category: butternut hollow, personal ramblings

Yesterday, a Realtor visited our home to begin the market and price analysis process. I’ve been feeling a little melancholy and wistful about the ol’ Butternut Hollow. We’ve known it but because it is becoming more real that our days here are coming to an end.

We won’t be able to buy another house because we’ve used our equity share to pay off credit debt. It’s great to be free of that… but we still have our tax debt. And, finances being what they have been – we aren’t going to have reserves to put a down on a new house.

Paul & I bought our first home 10 years ago. Even through three house moves, we’ve loved being homeowners. It fits us — we like working on home projects, day dreaming about what we could do on the next project and having a place that is home. But, for the next while, it’s back to the renting life for us.

If we are going to have to rent, we have been thinking we should get something as cheaply as possible. The lower our expenses, the sooner we can save up to buy a house again. The problem with that idea is we live in the Seattle area. Rent doesn’t go for cheap. Our needs are a little unique too because we have our home office and my painting studio as well. In briefly poking around, if we wanted to seriously cut our overhead expenses, we would need to move out. I mean out out.

I was just sharing with my friend Michelle the quandry of our situation. We’ve been so cut off from our community for the last 5 years here due to work and finances. It’s hard to think creating another barrier by moving physically out and away from our friends and family as well. At the same time, if we want to get back on our financial feet, pay off tax debt and save up for a home — we are going to have to radically scale down and economize our budget for the couple of years.

I’m hoping the time we have will help us know what we should do.

One Comments

  1. Jeff
    on September 7th, 2007
    1

    Hi Janece, I really enjoy your site and wanted to ask you a question about your house. You mentioned that you did an “equity share”. Can you tell me more about how that works? Also, can you recommend any real estate agents who specialize in equity sharing transactions? I recently launched a website that tries to help people afford homes via equity sharing, but I don’t have any agents signed up yet who can assist our Pacific NW wanna-be-homeowners. Thanks, Jeff

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