Apologies for the long wall of text. My wife and I moved into our first home in April 2019. We loved the home, but unfortunately missed some signs that this would be a nightmare. We've had the roof leak into the ceiling, had our bathtub faucet stop working, we've gotten water in the basement several times, not to mention a handful of other "normal" repairs. But over the last few months or so, the basement foundation walls have developed more cracks and have shifted several inches (full post regarding what is happening here: https://old.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/gookr9/basement_and_crawlspace_foundation_walls_have/?ref=share&ref_source=link )
So long story short, we have serious to highly urgent structural damage going on with our house. We just had to replace our hot water heater, and from researching online and talking to a few people, getting outdoor drainage and the walls adjusted is going to cost anywhere from $10,000-$50,000 on a $120,000 house. My wife and I do not make a lot of money, and without these stimulus checks, we may not have been in a good spot to replace that water heater. I am becoming really depressed, highly anxious, and I feel like I'm backed into a corner with nowhere to go. This is terrifying that we have had such bad luck and are not in a strong financial position to tackle this. The way I see it, we have a few options but none of them are good.
1) We can try to get financing for the repairs and put more money into a house which was not even supposed to be our forever home. I do not know if there are any loan programs for first-time homebuyers, people early in their mortgage, etc. But I would assume any sort of personal loan or credit card would carry a high interest rate. My dad mentioned potentially a second mortgage, but that sounds terrifying at our age to take out another mortgage for a house that was built in 1957 and slowly dying. My concern with option 1 is that we sink a ton of money into the house and are swimming with more debt than we can handle for our entire adult lives, and then something else catastrophic happens.
2) We try to cut our losses and sell the house. This may be the more conservative option, but it comes with personal regrets. If we try to sell the house, we will more than likely take a loss because I would imagine anybody or their inspector would see how much of a money pit the basement walls are going to be. So we would take a loss and owe a lot of money, and then find somewhere to stay. My wife and I are trying to have our first child, so we ideally do not want to move in to my parent's basement (not to mention other reasons). We could try to find an apartment, but we would still need to downsize most of our stuff and then go back to dealing with all of the pitfalls of apartment life. We could try to find a new house, but with being underwater on our current mortgage and how much our income is, we probably wouldn't be able to find a new house that's any more secure.
I am truly terrified of our finances and feel like we have ruined our adult lives in our 20s. This house has taken such a bad turn since we moved in and I feel like we have no option that ends with us having any semblance of happiness. I don't know if there are other options that we are missing, or if anybody has any other advice. I appreciate the help from anybody reading.
Submitted May 22, 2020 at 05:40PM by rentAbuddy https://ift.tt/2LQEigr
