In The Beginning

Three and a half years ago, I bought a 60s ranch style home in Beaumont Tx for $102,000 sight unseen. Mistake number 1.

I needed a house fast and trusted a realtor that came highly recommended to me to ensure the home was in good working order, all the repairs and concessions were complete. She assured me there was no need for an inspection as she knew the sellers most of her life and inspections were not required for a mortgage in Texas. So I trusted her. Mistake number 2.

She assured me this was a great deal. She said the house appraised at $105,000. I'm thinking, "yippee! I already have 3000 in equity". Mistake number 3.

In 2008, Hurricane Ike came through and ripped up my sunroom. Eek. Every penny I had in savings and what little the insurance gave me went to cover a sunroom renovation. New ceiling, roof, skirt, floor stain, doors, ceiling fan, light fixture, 3 windows. To a wonderful total of $7000. So in my head, that means with renovations and equity, house is worth $112,000. at least, right? sooo wrong!

 In 2009, Matt moved in with me. He is always in need of a project and does all the cooking. So I gave him permission to renovate the kitchen. We got a new stove, microwave/hood combination, dishwasher, disposal, countertops, sink, faucet, backsplash, lights, switches. We painted the cabinets, walls, doors, and trim work. The only thing we left untouched were the tile floors and the fridge.

The granite countertops we got from Lowes. grrr. The final product looked nothing like the sample they showed us. When we bought the granite, they suggested we drive all the way to Houston to the manufacturer on a workday to make sure it was the slab we wanted. I figured why bother, if the sample is a true sample.

Well, it wasn't. Even after the manufacturer sent us photos of another sample of the slab, which looked completely different from the sample at lowes. It still looked ok. When the slab arrived, it looked nothing like either sample we saw and was awful. To say the least we were really pissed. We based our entire kitchen design around the colors in the granite, which was the last to arrive. lowes offered some discounts on future purchases to make up for our displeasure, but wouldn't give us new granite. So our kitchen was doomed to be mismatched. Lesson #1-Don't trust granite samples, go to the manufacturer and choose the slab you want. Luckily, overall, it came out ok. I'm still not a fan of the granite, but I've learned to live with it.

Overall, I think we spent close to $6000 on the kitchen renovation. Which isn't bad. It's a good thing Matt did most of the work himself. That saved us a fortune in labor cost.

With the updated kitchen, I figured the house was now worth about $118,000. With the cost of renovations, the earlier appraisal, and the time invested in the home it seemed like a fair estimate. So, you can imagine my surprise when a realtor said he would list the home for 99,000 two weeks ago! How is that possible? It appraised for 105,000 three years ago, we did renovations, landscaping in the back yard, the school district changed to a better school. Have the home values in this area dropped that much? I can't even afford to leave it for that amount!

I'm trapped in my own home. arrgggggg.

After crunching some numbers, figuring what we have invested so far, closing cost, earlier appraisals, concessions, and mortgage payoff, 10,000 down payment for new home, I figured I would have to sell for 138,000 to walk away. We are a really long way from that. A really really long way. So the renovations continue....