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How do you spell depressed???
A-N-N-I-E
Yesterday, we met with the modular company about our home. We left there feeling pretty good about life. Today we met with our mortgage guy - things are NOT looking good. We need to have an appraisal done and he's not sure we'll come in where we need to because of the economy; mostly due to the large numbers of foreclosures - as in, building this home right now might not be a good idea. Rates are phenomenal, but we'd basically have to come up with an extra $1000 a month to cover all costs. WTF!?!?! OR we hang out another 2-3 years and wait for the banks to sort through the big mess they're in and for property values to rise again. He explained that property values have gone down about 30% since we bought 4 years ago so we're already starting out in the hole. I already feel like we're living paycheck to paycheck so I'm trying to figure out where the magic $1000 is going to come from. 6 months ago when we first looked into this, the situation did not seem so bleak. I think I could do another year here, but I'm not sure I can do another 2-3. I'm so sad. I was really hoping we'd be in this house by fall. 
I just poured myself a big glass of wine.
Re: How do you spell depressed???
ugg
that sucks.
Is it worth getting an appraisal done anyway, just to see - or is he pretty confident with his estimated value?
The thing is he has no problem qualifying us and rolling our new loan into our existing loan - it's just that we will probably take a HUGE setback. He's thinking our appraisal will come in about $40,000 (at least) under what we owe with our current home and how much the new home will cost. We LOVE where we live so looking elsewhere definitely isn't an option (which he inquired about). We probably should've built right away when we bought the property 4 years ago! UGH! And right now it's enough room for the 3 of us (heck we still have a guest room!). Square footage-wise though it's tiny - about 1000 SF. I was really looking forward to finally having a mud room.
He is thinking that the first mortgage plus the cost of the build will come in $40K less than the appraisal of the new home on our property...not what our existing property is valued at. And just to do the appraisal will cost us $500 - basically to find out how much our new property WON'T be worth. Our mortgage guy can get us a rough estimate to find out if it's worth paying to have an actual appraisal done. I hate money. Unfortunately we're seriously thinking of putting it off YET another year.
We're in a similar situation. We have been in our place 5 years. We like it and all, but as soon as we're ready to add #2, we have to start thinking about moving. We can really only fit 1.5 kids in here comfortably. We've been talking about building our "forever dream house" that DH would design so that we've got lots of years to enjoy it. BUT... we can't afford to buy the land it would sit on and so of course we can't afford the mortgage to build it and who knows what we'd get and how fast for our current place. It's all very stressful.
And then there's the non-existant college fund, the other half of the roof we should replace, the failing garage roof, the new tires I need since one is leaking and I need to buy 4 at a time, the bathroom we need to finish, a haircut for me... there no cash money for any of it. Forget big plans. Blah.
Oh sweetie, I totally hear you! I'm so sorry this is happening! I TOTALLY get it
We planned on getting into our house and being there for 2 years, it's been 4, two years on the market and I'm feeling the pressure with baby #2 on the way. We bought our house $30K under the appraised amount and now, I'm too scared to pay the $400 for an appraisal for a refinance or anything else because we can't seem to even get what we owe out of it, let alone what we paid. So somehow in 4 years our property has not only devalued the $30K in equity we had but an extra $20K!?!
I'm so tired of hearing people say the market is coming back, because in MHO it is getting worse. Everytime we get an offer its considerably lower and lower and lower.
:::::huge hugs:::: call me if you need to talk/vent/etc. Getting construction loans is super hard right now, that's why when our land fell through it was a huge let down. Uhhhh, so sorry
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware; joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. -Henry Miller
http://cookthehumbletable.blogspot.com/
I 100% understand, Annie. We BUILT our modular 3.5 years ago when the prices were high and building was cheaper than buying. But now there is NO WAY that we'd come out ahead and that's after we paid cash to build an attached mudroom and garage. We sunk tons of money in to it and yet it is still valued at less than what we paid. It sucks bad. We sometimes think about what if we were to move or build again and neither of us can see when that would ever be feasible just because of taking a loss on what we have already.
The economy blows.
*HUGE HUG*