Well, we had hopes of replacing our 26 year old double-wide mobile home with a new(er) model this year, but this housing thing has pretty much dashed those hopes. We might as well want to buy Branson real estate as to buy a new(er) mobile home.
We’re in no danger of losing our present home. Unlike many others, we didn’t succumb to the lure of borrowing more than our present home is worth or getting into one of those adjustable rate mortgages! (THANK GOD!). No, our problem lies elsewhere and it’s two-fold.
We were planning on using money from our 401K accounts to pay our current mortgage off and put a reasonable down payment on the new(er) home, but in the last 8 months, we’ve lost nearly $10,000 from those accounts because of the stock market being down. So, that means there isn’t as much money as we needed to do that with. We could pay off the existing mortgage, but that wouldn’t leave us anything to put down on the new(er) home. You can’t get a new loan now without a down payment of at least 10%, and the price homes we’ve been looking at are in the $100-$110K range — there’s that $10,000 again.
Our second issue is, while we could find property around here to buy and then rent out this house, I’m afraid we couldn’t ask enough for it to cover the existing mortgage and then we have built things to accommodate our animals that are permanent fixtures and that means building new kennels and an aviary at the other house (an additional expense of about $10,000 — that number yet again!).
So, I guess we’re stuck with this house for a few more years at least. Maybe now I can get Ken to at least let me paint the office and dining room.
Maybe the Economic Stimulus Plan will turn the economy around and we’ll gain back that $10,00 we lost (BWAHHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAAHAA!)
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