a last ditch effort

I had told you that we were going to meet with a few realtors to put our house back on the market in an effort to take advantage of what is supposed to be "the busy season" of real estate. So. last week almost every night we met with one realtor after another.

Nice? Sure. Competent? Sure. Expensive? Uh...yeah.

After each one left, we sat with the calculator running every scenario that we could think of. Basically what it boils down to folks is we just can't part with this house for what could be a HUGE hit to our equity. So, what next? We were stumped.

In the past we'd had more interest in renting our house than we ever had in buyers. Which was strange, because we never had said that was an option because we didn't think it would be. We started tossing the idea around of leasing our house for a few years with the hope that the market would improve at some point and then we could relist our house for sale. Or if the market doesn't improve...well then, I guess we'll have ourselves a fine rental house. Of course our biggest concerns were: (1) are we {financially} able to do this; and (2) what if we get horrendous renters that trash our house. Both scary, scary things to think about.

We first contacted our mortgage folks to see if it was even something we could consider. 2 days later we got the word that it would not be a problem. We've also been in contact with property management companies so that Joey and I would not be bothered with phone calls at 2am because a toilet is overflowing. They will also take care of the contract, background checks, maintenance, inspection checks on the house, and well, pretty much everything. So long as we can procure renter(s) then we are on our way to breaking ground!

It's so exciting, but also nerve wracking! We've already had more interest in the few days that our house has been available for lease than when it was for sale. So, a good sign right? Let's hope!

Here's a pick of our house to be! This is the model home, so ours will be different, but you get the idea :)