Hubby has survived another Friday of layoffs. Each day of work for him is one more day of pay, that we are thankful for. An option I'm leaning towards - not sure if hubby is on board 100% (more like 50%) (heck, I'm not even sure I'm on board 100%!) I'm thinking we could make a drastic change and sell our house, probably in the Spring/Summer time frame. We move to the Southern Okanagon, which is where we want to retire in 23+ years anyways - the weather is warm and hardly ever has any snow. The (2) towns we would likely rent in, does not have a lot of employment opportunities, but the major city about 25 mins away does, so we could both find work there and just commute, right now in the City we live in, we are both commuting 25-45 mins one way, for each of us, so the commute would not be an issue for us, plus the new commute in the Okanagan would be mostly on a highway,with beautiful views.
- I asked hubby to find out what the early payment penalty on the mortgage would be, and so he did phone on the weekend and found out, it would be $21,000. Realtor fees on top of that would be 7% on the first $100,000 + 3% on the remaining balance and than we would have to pay GST on the total commissions.
We bought our house in Dec of 2007 for $365,000, We had put 20% down for a down payment of $73,000, which left us with a mortgage of $292,000. Our mortgage is currently sitting at $282,896.31. Our interes rate on the mortgage is 5.15%.
With the down turn in the housing market, we figure we could currently list for $349,900 (have not consulted with a real estate agent yet, but this price is based on what a house across the street from us, listed for, just last week and they sold their house on Saturday, so just about a week on the market, it was listed for $349,900 and it's smaller than our house and doesn't have an extra bedroom and bathroom and hardwood floors, like ours does). So assuming we list for $349,900 and get $339,000, then we would be looking at a charge of approx $14,879 in commissions. Which means we would walk away with approx $20,224. Of course I would like to not pay any penalty fees on paying off the mortgage sooner, but it's an option.
We would not move unless, we were sure of work. If it doesn't work out, we move back to Alberta and move into our condo, that we currently rent out as part of our investment portfolio.
I don't know...I like to always have a plan of just in case, for whatever in life, so this is no different. Tomorrow is another day.
From an original down payment of $73000 plus the principal portion of the mortgage payment paid over the years, and you estimate you will walk away with $20224. I hope things won't have to work out this way for you. I know a couple who had sell their house this summer for quite a bit less than what they were hoping to get. They also put into a whole bunch sweat labour/material cost to reno their home. Their home was on the market for 4 plus months and at the end they were just happy to get it off their hands. I really really hope you won't have to sell in this stagnant market. Any chance you can rent the house out if you do move?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad he didn't get laid off, what a bad feeling that would be. And your neighbors house was only on the market for a week? Or did I read it wrong, because that's great!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I hope things work out and we won't have to sell. It will depend on if hubby's pay will remain the same + overtime, we need the overtime to make it work so that we can still live below our means and be able to save for retirement.
ReplyDeleteYes, you heard right, the house was only on the market for a week. So I'm thinking they must have gotten pretty close to their asking price of $349,900. I'm happy for them. I'm not sure why they are moving but I hope it all works out for the best for them.