Round two ...

It was only a matter of time and now, time is here.

Our house is going back up for sale this evening.

We were in quite a bit of a financial jam this time last summer and ended up putting our house up for sale. We left it on the market for the entire contract of six months, but did not sell it, obviously. We had some interest and some offers but none that we could accept. They were quite a bit lower than our asking price and we couldn't go very low and stay in the black, which was the goal.

The sale of our other house plus our income tax refund last spring bailed us out of the jam and so when the realtor's contract expired we didn't renew. We knew that we would come to this point again and felt deep down that we should keep the house on the market, but frankly, we were tired.

We have come to the realization that not being able to make our mortgage payment is more of a permanent situation than a temporary one. In light of that we must make another valiant effort to reduce our monthly housing expenses, and we start by selling our current house.

The housing market is no better, probably worse. But we must give it another try. I did discover an interesting and very helpful piece of information today in talking with the mortgage company. No one shared this with us before because we evidently didn't ask the right questions, and a mortgage company or a realtor isn't going to volunteer this information because no one makes money like this. There is something called a short sale that can be done when you cannot make your mortgage payments and must sell your home, but cannot get the value of the loan. Your realtor submits some paperwork to the mortgage company and you submit some detailing the family's income and expenses. The mortgage company may or may not approve the sale for less than the value of your loan and your debt will be considered paid in full.

Now, this information, as helpful as it is, would have been more helpful last spring. We had a very interested buyer who made us a sincere offer, but it was a few thousand dollars less than what we owed on the house. We couldn't come up with the difference since we had just forked over quite a bit to prevent foreclosure (another lesson we learned last summer) so we had to pass on the offer. If we had known about this short sale option, we would have most certainly tried to get that approved.

Maybe this time we can stash this information away and use it if we must.

I didn't expect the house to go up for sale so soon and now I have all manner of cleaning to do. My husband called our realtor yesterday and they set up an appointment for this evening. He'll be coming by with paperwork and a sign for the yard.

We'll be going back to living in a bare bones house and a lot of hurried house cleanings for showings. It's not easy living in a house you are trying to sell when you have five kids in the house all day long every day!

We are hoping that we can sell the house and find other, less expensive, quarters. Things won't be any easier on us financially but we would like to at least be able to meet our bills each month. We've pared down to about as little as we can expense-wise and no one is able to take on any more work. My husband is already working two jobs and I am doing the best I can with mine.

We may have some changes on the horizon soon!