We were going to take out a bridge loan to help with the down payment for the new house, and pay it off once our current house sold. That would take some of the pressure off of selling our house. The bank told us it would be no problem. Today we got a call saying that the bridge loan would be half the amount we expected. Suddenly we're talking about decreasing our down payment, liquidating our investments, and scraping together every last penny.
JW pointed out that the fact that we're worried about the down payment shows what a blessing it was that the first house fell through. Very true. But it doesn't make things any better.
Before, I was trying to suppress the little voice in my head saying, Why are we doing this? and mostly succeeding. But it's harder now. We're not just losing a bathroom and a kitchen -- we're losing our financial cushion. If we don't sell before or soon after the closing, we'll be living paycheck to paycheck. We'll be paying for two mortgages, my student loans, the bridge loan, and daycare.
It's too late to back out now. Maybe one day all this will seem like a good idea.
Oh man. Fingers crossed for a quick sale that nets you what you deserve.
ReplyDeleteWe went through the same thing actually very recently. We thought we'd be able to take out a home equity loan on our condo to cover part of the down payment on our new place. Apparently it's impossible to get home equity loans anymore, so that didn't work. (At least it didn't work for us, but I was told that we wouldn't be able to even get a bridge loan, so maybe you should find out if you could get a home equity loan?). It totally sucked, because for the last 2 years we had been putting all of our extra cash into paying down our mortgage. In retrospect, we should have been just letting it pile up in the bank. In the end, we were extremely blessed to have a family member loan us the money for the week in between closings.) The two months trying to work out financing were really really sucky, so I know what you're going through.
ReplyDeleteDid you know you can borrow a good chunk of your retirement account money (I can't remember if it's 401(k) or IRA or both) and not have any penalties as long as you put it back within 30 or 60 days? Have you considered that?
And just out of curiosity, has your mortgage contingency date passed?
Thanks for the advice, Allison. Our mortgage contingency date hasn't passed, but we did already get our commitment letter and pass it on to the buyer. Since we don't yet have an offer on our house, I wouldn't feel comfortable borrowing from retirement. I think we'll be able to just barely make it work, but I'm feeling really pessimistic about getting an offer on our house anytime soon, or about getting an offer at anywhere near the price we were hoping for.
ReplyDeleteCM, my fingers are crossed! Moving is disruptive enough without the added stress of financial woes. Keep us posted.
ReplyDelete