The American Nightmare

This is the true story of our first home. I am telling this story out of great frustration and also hope that some part of this might help others.

So I guess some “background” on why we chose this house and the events leading up to it.

At the beginning of 2007 we were ready to buy our first house. We had worked really hard to get our credit up so we could get a good rate, however the reality of it was that we only had a certain amount of money we could spend. Based on that amount, it put us in some seedy areas of HEB (yes HEB does have seedy areas), in some really scary parts of Fort Worth, out in the middle of no where or in South Arlington…which according some friend and family is the same as “out in the middle of no where.”

One other tidbit of information is that Heather was 3 months pregnant at the time, so we needed to take into consideration that we were going to be having a new addition really soon.

We decided on South Arlington. It was only 20 minutes away from where we worked and the area that we wanted to live in had a lot of new up and coming shopping areas that were nice. We set out and looked at 14 houses in one day. Wish I was kidding. We had our poor nephew with us and it is a miracle he still talks to us! We looked at home houses that it looked like actual murders had taken place. We looked at another one that had 3 foot of mold along every wall from where it was flooded out. It was bad!!

Literally the last house we saw that day we both loved. It was really “open”, had new carpet and tile in the kitchen and bathroom. Yeah, there were some drawbacks and it needed some work, but we really liked it and we figured it would cost us the least to fix up and it was move in ready.

The house passed inspection, we got a “good deal” on the house, family signed off on it and so we closed on it the last day in March 2007.

And then it started…we started noticing cracks in the house. You know, those cracks that you get when the house settles. The thing in, they were above every door way and every window. We have a running joke now that we try and find a wall WITHOUT a crack! It is pretty hard to do.

Anyways, we were concerned about this being first time homeowners. Then we remembered there was foundation work done on the house and it came with a lifetime warranty. Now, we weren’t too sure what was under warranty, but we were about to find out!!

We made several calls, but couldn’t ever get anyone to call us back…and for good reason! The company was long out of business and had been for awhile. So let that be a lesson. If you are buying a home and there is a warranty on the foundation, find out what the warranty covers and most importantly IF THEY ARE STILL IN BUSINESS!!!!!

Crushed is the only way to describe how we felt. Our first home and there were cracks everywhere. I honestly thought that we would come home one day and the house would just be split in two down the middle.

So we researched our options. The first thing we did is have someone come and look at our foundation. Turns out it needed about $8,000 in work and we did not have that money. We thought about suing the guy that sold us the house and everyone we talked to told us it would cost us more to sue the guy than just fix the foundation. No bueno because we didn’t have the money for either option.

There really wasn’t anything we could do so we just got soaker hoses and ran them around the house. None of the cracks got any bigger, but they didn’t get any smaller either.

Fast forward to June 2010. Heather finds out that the company she is working for is closing down and she got a 2-day notice. Now Heather will argue that what happens next is all her fault, but it isn’t. We are a team and we work through things together.

It took her about 2 months to find a job and when she did, it came with a pay cut. It was still more than the unemployment checks, but less than what she was making. Looking back on it now, we are both very thankful she found this job because the people are amazing!

But the unemployment started us down a path of maxing out our credit cards and using what little we had in savings. A horrible by product of the credit card balances going up, was the payments went up…and once we were late on a payment the interest rates went up and forced the payments up again. It got really ugly really quick. We did not hide from anyone and let all our creditors know of our situation.

As crazy as this sounds (and it is still true almost a year later) no one could help us because we were not late on our payments.

Go back and read that last sentence…they could NOT help us because we were good customers. This went for our credit cards AND our mortgage! The only way we could get help was to not make our payments. It really floored us.

We fought and fought and fought until October when we realized it was not worth the fight anymore. Gas prices were going up and we were making no head way on our credit cards making the minimum payments so we made the tough decision to put our house on the market.

We had mixed feelings about this. On one hand it really felt like we failed. But on the other, we felt like it would give us a clean slate to start over with.

We had our family realtor come out and put the house on the market. We told him all along that we were not looking to make money on the deal; we just wanted to break even and get out. There were some homes in the area that sold for more than $120,000, so we put ours on the market for $116,000…$1,000 less than what it had appraised for almost 4 years ago and more than the $105,000 that we owed. We figured this was a good deal and we would be out by Christmas. As of today, we have only had 2 people look at our house…

The next set of events all kind of happened around the same time and their order isn’t too terribly important.

One thing that happened the first part of 2011 is our tax appraised value went down! This is the same value that had been the same since the early 1990’s. I knew this was not good! The county loves to get their money and if they think my house is worth less, it means less money in their pockets! Not good! The tax value dropped right at $10,000. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that is almost 10% the value of our house! Imagine if your house lost 10% of its value.

Another thing that happened is that it became apparent that financially we were not going to be able to hang on to the house much longer. The budget was becoming a battle and like most Americans the term “paycheck to paycheck” was applicable to us as well. We contacted our mortgage company and once again were told that there was nothing they could do since we were not behind on any payments.

This is where morally we had some issues. Do we not pay our mortgage so they will help us? Do we just walk away from the house? Do we stay and continue to dig a hole that we will never be able to get out of? Will any of these options not just totally kill what little credit score we have left?

Compounding our issues was the fact that property values in our neighborhood were dropping…fast! In our immediate area, there were several houses that are being foreclosed on or being sold WAY below market value. When we went back to our realtor and looked at the numbers, we would need to price our house at $84,000…that is $20,000 LESS than what we owe and almost $30,000 less than the appraised value when we bought it. On top of that, the house still needs $8,000 in foundation work!!!!!

We have gone back to our mortgage company trying to work through any program they have. It seems like we have to ask them about programs instead of them telling us what is available. VERY frustrating since we don’t know what is out there.

It turns out that you can’t “apply” for more than one program at a time because to do one program, you house has to be listed above what you owe. To do another program, your house has to be listed below what you owe. Doesn’t take a genius to realize that isn’t going to work.

On top of ALL that, we were told that our application on one of the programs was canceled by them because they didn’t have the man power to help those people with offers on their houses, much less people like us with no offers on our house. Crushed.

All we get from our mortgage company are letters telling us to take action. But we have been taking action for almost a year now and all we keep hitting are brick walls…once again because our house payment is current.

We have thought about a lot of other options. We have thought about taking Lex out of her private school and putting her in “babysitting daycare”. But then she comes in and counts to 20 in Spanish or sings one of the songs she learned in chapel and we realize how much it would set her back.

We have thought about putting her in early morning care so we could park one of our cars to save on gas, but we would only be saving $50 a month. Is that really worth waking her up at 6:30 in the morning and her being in school for 10 hours? We don’t think so.

People have asked us why we don’t borrow money from family. What for? We are current on everything.

We have thought about getting part time jobs, but at what cost? Neither of us are too keen on giving up our family weekends and spending time away from Lex. And once again, we need long-term solutions.

We aren’t the people that complain about not having money and we aren’t the people that are going to blame anyone else for our lot in life. This is our situation and we have to handle it the best we see fit.

And to clarify for everyone…we are not broke. Our monthly expenses are really very low and our credit card debt is so low it would probably shock you. We don’t blow money on nice things. The last “luxury” item we bought for ourselves was the iPhone4. However, we don’t really count that because we sold our old iPhones on eBay to cover the cost (and then some). Yes, we could probably stay home and eat 1 or 2 more nights a week, but in the grand scheme of things $25 at On The Border isn’t the issue.

We have garage sales and buy clothes for Lex at the resale shops. We are just at a point that we are in a losing battle with our house and moving to an apartment would save us almost $1,000 in gas and rent a month as well as rest of our utilities will go down as well.

We are just tired…tired of paying $400 for gas a month, tired of fighting with Wells Fargo, tired of spending almost 3 hours total in a car per day, tired of not being able to take a family vacation…just tired.

This house will always have good memories for us. It is the house we brought Alexis home to, where Casper is buried in the backyard, where we watched the Rangers clinch their first ever AL pennant, where Santa first came to visit Lex and so many other little things that we will never forget.

So there you have it…how the American Dream turned into the American Nightmare for us. I know we are not alone in this. We see it everyday on the news. But in the end, it does feel like we failed and that is a crappy feeling.

All this to let everyone know we are moving…in two weeks! One of the other by products of the housing market being what it is, most apartment complexes are FULL! We were able to locate one, but to get it we had to move in on the first of June. So we are!

I hope someone can learn something from this. I know we have…