My wife and I need to get out of our house ASAP for reasons both financial and mental-health-related. I’ve been told we may need to look into a short sale, but researching the process is making my head explode.
What, if any, are our options? (more inside, obviously) We bought this house 4 years ago, on two incomes, intending to start a family. Short version - it hasn’t happened yet, and won’t for the foreseeable future. This, and a few other stressors, helped bring my wife into a depressive spiral, which led to her leaving work indefinitely about a year ago.
We currently live on my salary plus a pittance from her long-term disability - we’re working on getting more, but Social Security is notoriously slow to approve this kind of thing. We’re not behind on any payments yet. We’ve got three loans for this house - we financed initially with an 80/20, and between the two have managed to pay down about 10% of the principal. We also have a loan through our town that we used to pay for a new well and replacement septic system. We have a little bit in savings, but if we continue to pay the minimum payments on all the loans (and eat, keep utilities current, etc.) it’ll be gone in another 6 months or so.
Her counselor has mentioned that living here may well be an additional stressor for her, and that we might need to work on finding a way out to help her recover. It’s an older house that, while livable, definitely needs a lot of work that we either can’t afford to have done, or don’t have the energy or ambition to tackle right now. We have an offer from a family member to stay with them if we need to get out, and neither of us is too proud to take them up on it.
I did the online credit counseling at 995-HOPE’s website, and the counselor there suggested putting the house on the market, but mentioned that we may need to consider a short sale. It’s highly unlikely, if we sell the place, that we’ll get anything close to what we owe on all the loans, and we really don’t want to foreclose.
Where we’re not in arrears with either of our mortgage companies, is short sale even an option? How do we find an agent willing to put in the extra work for less money? Are there other options we haven’t considered? It’s all incredibly confusing and frustrating - if you can, please help us, hive mind!