"Hey! Come check out the fireplace on this one."
It was the boyfriend, checking rental listings for the OC on the laptop. Old habits die hard.
It would appear we aren't going to have a problem finding a place to live. My preference would be to downsize drastically, edit all the crap out of our lives and move light, but no one ever listens to me. I suggested that when we moved to Bako and when we moved into this house, to no avail because, as I mentioned, no one ever listens to me.
We thought about somewhere in the South County, closer to the beach, but the commute for the boyfriend would quickly grow old and the prices are a little out of our league. Besides, that would be uncomfortably close to my sister and her nefarious web of Mona Vie pyramid schemes. There would always be the danger of a surprise knock at the door and a fresh case of snake oil, and no one wants to chance that. So we're looking more in Northern OC, closer to my folks and all my long lost friends.
And then there's this house.
I knew from the start this house would end up being an albatross around our necks, but as I possibly mentioned before, no one ever listens to me. So we've been mulling our options over the past few days and so far we've whittled it down to four.
The first would be to just walk away and give the house back to the bank. Half the houses in Bakersfield are owned by the banks, so what's one more, right? It has a certain "clean slate" appeal to it, at first. But then you realize the boyfriend would be slapped with a Scarlet FICO score for the foreseeable future (this house is in his name), and considering my credit is still in the dumpster from the loss of the LA house, this option isn't really doable. One of us has to have a working credit score.
Option Two, a personal favorite of mine, would be to torch the house, take the insurance money and flee. Lord knows there's enough dodgy electrical work in the house to plausibly pull it off. Sure, it's illegal, but I prefer to think of it as "out of the box" thinking. Then again, I've watched enough CSI to know that even the dunderheaded BPD would probably figure it out. The first clue would be the vacant lot we'd leave behind since we wouldn't even bother to rebuild.
Option Three would be to rent the house out. The going rents in the neighborhood are several hundred dollars more than the mortgage, so the thought of having a little mad money every month was exciting. Not to mention the mortgage interest deduction the boyfriend would enjoy. But everyone we mentioned this to has been aghast. What if we get deadbeat renters? they ask. Something to think about, for sure. I see all the eviction notices posted in the neighborhood, walking the dogs. The chance of being stuck with a mortgage AND a rent AND facing a months long eviction process is beyond frightening. Even if we didn't get deadbeat tenants, the chances they'd trash the house and steal everything that isn't nailed down is real. My parents once had a rental house and finally sold it in disgust when the last tenants took everything including the window screens. Whatever profit we'd make would probably go into re-carpeting and painting the house every 12 months. And let's not even think about potential problems. In the year we've owned it we've dealt with everything from possems' to plumbing, flattened fences and rodents and roaches. Three guesses who will be dispatched to deal with the future ones? And there will be future ones, you just know it. Not gonna happen. Once I leave this town, I never want to come back. Ever.
Which leaves us with Option Four... SELL. And sell cheap. Breakeven cheap. And we can probably do it. The house had sat on the market so long because the front was so overgrown it looked like it was being reclaimed by a jungle and every flat surface inside was covered in Grandma Moses floral wall paper. We quickly took care of those issues, and now the house looks quite nice. Once we patch the gaping hole in the ceiling, it should be good to go. The only potential problem would be if prospective buyers had a competent home inspector, unlike us. But then the boyfriend had a brilliant idea... let's make using our corrupt, inept home inspector a condition of sale. Works for me.
Tomorrow it's time to start calling some realtors.
