Should I sell my house and move?

Question

We renovated our house in the city one block from the subway and immediately bought another in the country. We are in our mid-40s and want to build a 2000 sq. ft. addition onto the house in the country where we will ultimately retire, but to do so we need to sell the renovated house in the city to afford it.

We are at the peak of our careers and make really good money. Once we sell the city house we'll never get it back again and may not be able to keep our jobs although we'd likely not have to work or need the incomes we have. I love both homes so much, but it is a tremendous amount of work and we won't have our bodies forever to build the addition.

Also, the market is down, but our house in the city didn't really go down because of the gas crunch and because it's in a very desirable location.

Last but not least, it's the last undeveloped block in the entire area and my property is dead in the middle.

Answer 1

Rent out the city house for now, and find a small, affordable apartment in the city you can live in during the week to save on the commute to work, while you work on your country house on the weekends. When the market goes up in a few years, sell the city house.

Answer 2

If you can make a good amount of money on the house by selling it then I guess it would be a good idea.  But if not...hold onto it until the market gets strong again and it will....in the meantime...maybe you can rent it out and have someone else paying your mortgage and when you eventually sell it you will have all that much mroe equity in it at no cost to you.

Answer 3

Right now it is a buyers market. Have you recently had your house appraised?  You might be surprised. We recently refinanced out of an Adjustable Rate mortgage into a 30 year fixed, and our home should have appraised for $50,000 more than it did and the reason on the appraisal states the economy and development in our area and the longer time it takes for homes to sell. That made us upside down in our home when we shouldn't have been and had to come in with $26,000 to close.

Our mortgage broker told us if we wanted to sell our home we should wait 4-5 years because hopefully by then things will start going up again, and this is the worst she has ever seen the market.

So if you can hold on to it a little longer I would.