To sell or not to sell, that is the question. I know there are people out there that are in the same boat we are in. We are making our payments on time. Sometimes stretching to make our payments on time. But we can't sell our home because we are upside down (more owing than the value of the home). We met, fell in love and both sold our homes at the peak of the market (didn't know it was the peak at the time) and bought at the peak of the market. Lo and behold, 6 years later, our huge down payment has disappeared into thin air!
Well, we were told that we couldn't get a loan modification because we weren't behind. We couldn't refinance because our loan to value exceeded the 105% (congress said to go up to 125% but none of the lenders went along with that, at least not the ones we talked to). Our loan wasn't sold to FNMA or FHLMC, so we didn't qualify for that program! Then earlier this year, Congress approved this program whose loan wasn't sold to FNMA or FHLMC. Boy, were we excited! Here is our chance. We trapes down to the bank and said, okay, we now qualify. Then after they looked up our loan, they said, no we don't. Why, I thought they just approved that program for us non-fannie freddie people? Oh, that's only for the people who took out their mortgage after 2008! Those people were the ones that were mistreated by the big lenders, according to the study, and people with those loans were going to be compensated. (I was beginning to wonder if they wrote programs around our loan so that we wouldn't qualify no matter what new program comes out.)
So, what to do what to do? Well, we decided that since we aren't able to downsize now, we will continue to keep the house up and in working order. Since we love the house anyway. we'll continue to improve on things in the house that needs to be improved upon and someday soon, when the economy improves (which it is beginning to) and value of homes start ascending again, the condition of our home will still be in tip top shape so that it would even up with the current values at the time we are ready to sell.
