As my wife would say, I am a worry bug and this is something we can deal with once the time comes. However, it is hard for me not to think ahead and work out what the possible options are for my relocation if and when I do get a new job in CA. Being positive, I wish for the best and hope that this current wave of interviews will pay off. In which case, we will likely have to relocate within the next few months. If we were leasing, it would not be as much of an issue, but since we purchased a house and considering the current economy, this portion of the relocation process may be tricky...

Our Housing Situation

We purchase this house almost 2 years ago. Although the house was older (built in 1982) it was at close proximity to a lake and also had ~1 acre of land. So this was a selling point for us. The initial asking price for the house was about 720K but by the time we were looking at it the prices went down to about 650K which based on Zillow was closer to the actual market price at that point. There were some problems with the house due to its age, mainly the fact that the roofing would likely need to be redone in the next 3-5 years and that the heating system was also pretty worn down. Knowing this and what the sellers initially paid for the house, we were able to megotiate down to 605K which seemed fair considering the state of the house and the current market.

Unfortunately, the big mistake we made was to get too attached and purchase the house although the payments were unrealistic for us. In order to be able to make payments, we had to settle for an interest only loan and also needed to finance at 100%. Even so, the payments still added up to over $4000 per month including taxes which is a good chunk of my paycheck. Of course, luck not being on our side, we were also hit with a variety of other emergencies in the past 2 years which forced us to take on some other debts and made our finances even tighter. At the moment, we are surviving but mostly paycheck-to-paycheck.

And of course, since we've lived there both our healths have been pretty poor. Meaning that over the last year or so, outside maintenance and indoor cleaning have been kept to a miminum. So in other words, the whole house looks like a mess and would need some TLC before we could even consider putting it up for sale...

So what is the house worth right now? Based on Zillow, it would appear the value of houses in the area dropped about 12%, which seems consistent with other numbers i've seen elsewhere. With that in mind, and considering no real repairs have been done to the house, I would estimate a fair market value for the house at about 605K*0.88 = 532K. Our payments have been interest only but I have applied a little extra principal now and then to the payments so we still owe about 600K on the house meaning that we are technically about $68,000 in the hole at the moment.

Possible Options

There is a fair number of possible options we can take moving forward but none of them are perfect.

1. Sell the house at break even: We can try to sell the house for 600K in the hopes that someone with the finances and interest for the house trumps the fact that it is over valued at the current market and this would allow us to break even. This option is however quite unrealistic in our area. There is more than a fair share of houses that have been on the market for 6+ months with little to no activity. Although this option would be the best financially for me, it would mostl ikely be a waste of time.
2. Sell the house at FMV: We can also attempt to sell the house at its current FMV for around 530-540K. With this pricing, this would give us the best chance of actually selling the house. There are quite a few gotchas with this option. First of all, we would either need to get the two mortgage companies to agree with a short sale or I would need to find a way to foot the difference. Even cashing out all my retirement savings, I would still fall short. The second catch, which also applies to option #1 is bringing the house to a state where it is sellable. As I have mentioned earlier, the interior and landscaping does need some work to be showable. This will need to be done either way but with the current state of affairs, it may be hard to accomplish until we are mostly moved out of the house. Which in turns means we would have to possibly overlap our living arrangements while the house is on the market; something quite difficult considering we are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
3. Give it back to the bank: This is a more extreme option and probably the most messy one. We could simply hand the keys over to the bank and simply forclose on it. This would have a nasty impact on our credit but since most foreclosures are non-judicial in WA, we would not be held liable for any shortfalls from the foreclosure. There is also the possiblity of negotiation a "dead in lieu" type of forclosure with the bank, however quite unlikely since there is a second lien holder on the house.

Conclusion?

There isn't a conclusion yet as I am still debating my options. So far I am leaning towards putting the house up for sale once we move out but also stop making payments at the same time. This give the house a few months on the market to possibly complete a short sale or go back to the back after 3-4 months if it does not get any interest. That approach would be damaging to our credit and create a fair amount of stress on us. But at the same time, there is no way I can pony up the missing 60K in negative equity short of working out some deal with the mortgage companies.

Anyone have suggestions?

Been a little while since my last update. Well the say that no news is good news... Hehe, Well I am unsure about the good news part. But at least there is no real bad news.

To start off, well the "Help Me Out" contest was mostly a flop. With just 1 week to go, I've only had 6 people helping out. Was hoping that it would get it's own viral effect. But I did not put much effort into it and well I ended up getting what I put into it... Not much...

This is the first time I mention this on my blog, and I am unsure what impact it may have as I don't know if anyone from work reads this. But at tis point, I am looking into relocating back to California. Carrer opportunities with Microsoft in California are limited so I have been looking at other job possibilities down there either in a game studio or related type of company.

The decision in itself is not related to Microsoft itself or my current position as part of the Media Center team. But there are several factors that come into play.

First of which is health. Seems that both me and my wife have a real hard time with the Seattle winters and the lack of sunshine. Obviously, stress and other external factors are affecting our healths but we both did so muchbetter when we were in California that after five years in the Seattle area, we have to reconsider if it is really worth it.

The second factor is happiness. We have little friends here, and my wife's family is down in California. We feel alone, we have no support system and are both sad. I do not dislike my current job. But with the financial and health problems, just finding the energy and will to work my 8-10h/day is proving to be a tedious task. Our house is a mess, we are mostly living in filth and the cleaning is kept to a bare minimum.

Of course, the timing is really bad. Our finances are shot, the economy is struggling. But the reality is that both me and my wife are currently sinking into a black hole and something needs to be done. Realistically, we may need to foreclose on our house as selling it may be unlikely right now. But in the end, our health and happiness is more important than anything else so we need to take steps to move in a better direction.

It may seem that we are essentially running away from our problems. And it may be true. But in the current situation and looking at all the options, essentially leaving Seattle behind with all the financial whoes and stress seems to be the most beneficial option.

Recieved a nice commen to my "Long Sleepless Night" post. Since it is in french, I though i'd post a translation and answer in a seperate post.

Salut Seb,
Les temps sont difficiles pour plusieurs... Dans ton cas, une option possible est la faillite. À ce moment-là, toutes tes dettes (iincluant celles d'études que tu dois probablement au gouverment Canadien) vont "s'effacer". C'est pas une idée extraordinaire mais quelques fois c'est la meilleure.

Hi Seb,
The times are hard for alot of us... In your case, a ossible options is bankrupcy. At that point, all debts (including student loans you probably owe to the Canadian government) will go away. It's not a great idea but sometimes it's the best option.

I have considered bankrupcy. The biggest problem is that it is a legal judgment and becomes public record meaning it can actually hurt someone's ability to get a job. Also, unless the law changed, bankrupcies will not erase all debts such as student loans. In my case all my debt can be split into two, the regular debt and my mortgage. The problem is that we bought a house that is way too big, housing should be about 1/3 of your income where as my current mortgage is about 2/3. So they key for me is to get out of this house and mortgage and find somewhere cheap to live, which would allow me to pay off most my other debt in 1-2 years. But with the current market, and the house we're in, it's easier said than done. I am currently looking into relocating back to California and will try to sell the house at that point. But considering most houses have been n the market for 6+ months in this neighborhood, there is a good chance we might just have to give the house back to the bank.

Les troubles de sommeil et de digestion que toi et ta conjointe avez sont très certainement reliés au stress. Mais c'est vrai que la vitamine D est très importante aussi. Ma blonde a eu les mêmes problèmes (fatigue, etc.) et elle doit maintenant prendre 10 000 UI par semaine (1 comprimé par semaine). Tu peux prendre 1 000 UI par jour sans problème.

The sleep and digestive problems that you and your wife are having are most likely related to stress. Althogh it is true that vitamin D is also quite important. My girlfriend had the same problems (fatigue, etc) and must not take 10,000 IU per week. You can take 1000 IU per day with no problems.

I know stress is a huge factor, the financial worries are taking their toll both physically and mentally. Also, we have not much of a support system out here and part of the reason why we cant to go back to California, in addition to the lack of sunshine. As for the vitamin D, normal blood levels are supposed to be between 35-100 (not sure of the units). In my case, my initial bloodwork revealed N/D (not detected) which means that my level was less than 7. I was put 50,000 IU weekly for a few months and now my level a my last test was 23. It is still now but I am now on 1,000 IU / day with over the counter supplements. I still am not feeling great but do have some energy, as before I could barely get up the stairs at work or home. 

En tout cas, je comprends parfaitement ce que tu vis présentement et je sais que ce n'est pas facile. Tu pourrais toujours revenir travailler au Québec. Avec l'expérience que tu as accumulé, tu pourrais obtenir un emploi chez Ubisoft ou EA sans problème à mon avis.

Anyways, I totally understand what you are going through right now and now it's not easy. You could always come to work in Quebec. With your experience, you could get a job with Ubisoft or EA with no problem.

I agree that going back to Quebec would make some things easier. At least the cost of living is more managable. However, convincing my wife to move up there would be hard. Lets ust say she did not like the winter cold when we visit for the holidays :) 

C'est drôle la vie des fois, on pense que la situation va s'améliorer avec les années mais c'est pas toujours le cas... En tous cas, dis-toi que t'es pas tout seul dans ta situation. Moi, ce qui m'aide c'est d'aller au gym 3 fois par semaine. Après une heure d'entrainement, j'ai les idées plus claires et ça m'aide un peu.

Life is funny some times, we think that the situation will improve over time, but it's not always the case... Anyways, tell yourself that you are not the only one in a similar situation. For me, what helps is to go to the gym 3 times per week. After one hour of training, my thoughts are always clearer and this helps a little.

I need to exercise some more that's for sure! Well with taking my bipolar medication and being less active I have gained about 30 pounds over the past 2 years. I do need to break the cycle but it is hard why you can barely gety the energy to survive 8-10 hours per day at work.  

En passant,
1- Qu'est-ce que ça prend pour développer sur le IPhone ? J'imagine qu'il faut acheter un dev kit ?
2- Est-ce ta femme travaille au É-U, et si oui, dans quel domaine ? À moins qu'elle ait fait ing. elle aussi, je pense pas qu'elle pourrait travailler normalement, non ?

By the way,
1 - What do you need to develop on the iPhone? I assume you must buy a dev kit?
2 - Does your wife work in the USA, if so, in which field? Unless she's also an engineer, I would assume should could also normally work, no?

For the iPhone, you need to download the iPhone SDK from the apply site, which is free. You will also need an intel based Mac PC running OSX 10.5.4. This comes with an emulator so you can do alot of work directly on the computer. If you want to deploy the application to a real device or distribute on the iTunes Application Store, you need to become a registered developer which cost $99 and requires some patience.

About my wife, her background is mostly as an office assistant. When we married, we agreed that I would bring in the income and she would take ase of the house on weekdays so we can both enjoy our weekends. Right now, with her illness and all the medication she is taking, its just not happening. Our house is a mess, I myself do not hae the energy outside of being able to go to work every day to do too much cleaning done around the house. Our house if filthy and she cannot get much done these days. I think she needs to have her medication reevaluated but at the same time, she truely believes she needs it. Somewhat of a bad vicious cycle.

It is almost 5am as I am writing this. For some reason, I just can't fall asleep tonight. Although it has been quite some time since I had what I would consider a restful night sleep, I generally fall asleep fairly easily but just can't seem to benefit from it.

So here I am, catching up on emails and writing to my blog in the middle of the night.

I have to admit, the past few weeks have been really rough on me. My stomach problems have hit me fairly hard over the past three weeks. Nothing new except that I generally get a 2-3 day attack every 2-3 weeks. Not 2-3 weeks of almost daily attacks. I wonder if it either related to somethin bad I may have eaten, or it may also be related to stress. Although I wonder since my wife has also had her share of digestive problems over the past few weeks. It is always hard to tell as when one of us gets sick, the other tends to follow right behind. Which always makes me wonder whether the other is really sick or it is just some form of sympathy pains. But now, I am out of sick days and vacation days so I cannot really allow myself to be sick and take time off from work, at least not unless I want to take unpaid leave.

Stress has been fairly bad over the past month or so. Beyond the usual financial issues, work has been as busy as ever. I have been working on three overlapping sub-projects at the same time, each with its own set of deadlines. All of the projects are getting close to an end and have been in bug fixing mode. One advantage is that progress is generally easier to see as your bug count goes down. However, every time I manage to kill 5-6 bugs, another 4-5 are added. So the net progress is not great, and can be quite demotivating. This is also leaving some older lower priorty bugs dangling, which is not great either. On the brighter side, now at least I can see the end of he tunnel in regards to these projects and now know I will soon be working on some new and exciting challenges. Just hope I can get a breather from the deadline-craze!

As for the "help me out contest", I am not sure if it's even worth mentioning... So far 6 people have helped (a huge thanks to them). But obviously it is quite unlikely the 200 target will be met with only 194 to go in three weeks. I had mixed hopes from the beginning and figured it would not hurt. At least the earnings should be enogh to cover my web hosting costs for a few months.

Besides that, I've been wanting to start developping some small iPhone apps for fun (and possibly income). I have all I need to do so except for one key element. The mental energy to do it! I remember when I was in California and could work 10-12h at my day job and then spend another 4-6h at home working on my projects without any issues. I will admit tha I think the big reason is the weather and lack of sunshine in the Seattle area. I do miss California now and I would gladly trade the natury feel from here for the concree jungle with frequent sun light. Plus, my wife really misses the proximity to her friends and family. Too bad there isn't much in terms of Microsoft employment for which I would quilify in the SF Bay Area.

Enough blabbing for now. Time to go debate whether I should just get up and go or give sleep another try.

Time for a quick update on the contest...

It has been a little over two weeks now and I have to admit I am a little disapointed in the turnout. So far, only 3 entries, which sets a really slow pace in hopes of reaching the 200 entries required for the drawing to occur.

First of all, I want to thank those who have contributed so far and those who have contacted me with words of support. Just the kind words are really uplifting and encouraging.

Second, I'll admit I have not put much effort into advertising the contest. My blog gets about ~100 reads per day and I was hoping that this was enough traffic to generate support on its own and hopfeully some viral word-of-mouth effect. This has obviously has not been the case. As I have said, and anyone who knows me would agree, I am not much for asking for help. And no, this contest is not some elaborate ploy so I purchase a new flatscreen TV. I dug myself a hole and now need to drag myself out of it.

I will look into ways of promoting the contest further this week. But I have to admit I am a little clueless as to how I can spread the word much on a close-to-zero budget. Feel free to share your suggestions.

BTW, the email function on the site is still broken. You can contact me at Sebastien(dot)st(dot)laurent(at)gmail(dot)com... (sorry for the anti-spam email link)

I am not much for begging or asking for help. I prefer to try and get results myself rather than have to rely on someone else to get things done... But the fact is that after a few months, I am getting some traction but am not making too much progress with my debt reduction effort.

Having cut most expenses, the bleeding of money has been reduced to a bare minimum and I can say we are mostly balancing our finances right now. Of course, this does not leave much for any unexpected events nor does it help towars an accelerated replayment of my debts. So I have decided to create a little contest which may help jumpstart my debt replayment.

The contest is quite simple, join for a free trial of Amazon Prime or purchase an Amazon Kindle eBook reader and you are entered to win a $1000 Amazon gift certificate. You can also be entered in the drawing simply be referring others into the contest. You can read more details about the contest here: http:\\www.SebbyLive.com\HMOContest1.aspx.

I have tried to keep the rules to the contest as simple as possible and you can enter via either a purchase or by referring others to the site (in hope it encourages my readers to spread the word). The only real restrictions is that the drawing will only occur if at least 200 subscriptions/purchases occur, which allows me to ensure sufficent referral funds are earned to at least cover the cost of the gift certificate. I will post frequent updates as to how the contest is progressing....