Reverb 10: Beyond Avoidance

What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)

I should have listed my house for sale this summer.

As I’ve blogged about before, I bought a house in 2007. I had a 100% financed (0% down), 30-year, fixed-rate FHA mortgage through Bank of America.

Almost immediately, the house’s value declined. In two years, the value dropped 30% from it’s sale price, and I wound up owing about 25% more than it was worth. Now, according to Zillow, I owe about 40 percent more than it is worth — bringing it back in line with pre-bubble values. With that much of a loss, I would have to double my mortgage payment for the next two years and hope that the home further didn’t decline in value in order to get even. That’s crazy talk!

In February, I got engaged and Wednesday, December 22, I moved to Los Angeles — with the house still waiting to be listed.

Now what held me back was fear. I wasn’t ready to move. I wanted to leave the house on my own time table and listing it could have meant that I would have to go leave sooner than I wanted to.

But it also meant that I’ve laid out more money than necessary in order to keep that rapidly depreciating roof over my head. I could well have been free of it by now, and rapidly digging out of my other debt. As it stands, I will be listing this house during the seasonal home sale slump.

I do have a real estate agent. With the holidays, she is out of town. When she returns, I’ll sign and fax and wrangle paperwork. I expect to have the house listed by the new year. With any luck, I will be free of it in 3 – 6 months and working on rebuilding my financial health.