Note that I did not say “homeless.” Our home just has wheels! 

The house in Michigan is sold, done, gone. What a relief. It was a more arduous, time-consuming process than it should have been due to a goofy real estate agent (theirs, not ours!) and FHA rigmarole. We had to complete a few projects — remotely! — to satisfy the buyers and the appraiser.

Final papers were prepared by the title company and emailed to us on Monday here in San Antonio. We printed them out, took them to a notary for the required signatures, and sent them FedEx overnight. The buyers competed the process on Tuesday, and the money was wired into our account that same night.

Hallelujiah!

Sadly, the check from the mortgage payout was pretty lean. Technically, we lost a lot of money over the 17 years we owned the house.

Area home values really bottomed out after the 2007 recession and have not really rebounded. The house was appraised for 2/3 what we paid for it, and the final sale price reflects that.

Factoring in what we paid and invested and subtracting the payout, we essentially rented the house for roughly $1,300/month. Meh.

I don’t think I ever want to own a home again. The American Dream looks a lot different in this millennium than it did in the last one.

Many thanks to Gini Havermahl, our agent, who went above and beyond to help us pull this off.

home-is-where-the-heart-is