About 17 years ago, I bought my first house in this neighborhood—same model as the one I’m in only not updated, no pool, smaller lot, and close to two hideously noisy main drags. I paid $100,000. The seller was asking $130,000, but a recession was on, the house had been on the market for three months, and it was in an estate, so my Realtor talked him way down on the price. Except for a HUD house across the street, that was about as low as values got…I got a smokin’ deal on the place.

So. What this means is that property values in my area have dropped into the range where they were more than 15 years ago.

It also means I no longer can sell my house, use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage on the downtown house, and move in there when my son is ready to move on. This uptown house is not worth enough to cover what we owe on that house.

Annoying. It cuts off a key strategy for dealing with the difficult position the crash has created for us. Even though the neighborhood is not as nice as mine, the downtown house is quite charming; I like it and was willing to move into it, because it’s easier to maintain and has no expensive pool to care for. That’s now no longer an option.

Mulling over what we’re going to do in the long term…heaven help us!

First, I’d like to get my son’s name off that mortgage. They have him on there as the primary borrower, because I’m unemployed. Next year I should be earning more than I’m making now, plus of course, my retirement savings could pay for the house in full if I were forced to use them that way. Once the government permits me to earn a living wage again, it might be good to try to engineer a sale of the house to me. At least then he won’t be stuck with a financial black hole when I die—debts aren’t inherited, and even if they were, this is a no-recourse state. So once I’m gone, he can safely let the bank take it.

It remains to be seen, however, whether anyone will let us do that. Values have dropped commensurately in the downtown neighborhood. There, houses are selling for under $100,000. We presumably would have to get a new mortgage, and of course no one is going to write a new loan for $211,000 on a house that’s worth about $130,000, if we’re lucky.

We can’t rent the house for the amount of the presently reduced mortgage’s monthly payments. However, when it comes time for him to move on, I think renting will be probably our only option, other than walking and destroying his credit as well as mine. The rent would cover enough of the mortgage to make the remainder affordable, if galling. Problem is, it wouldn’t be enough to build a repair and maintenance fund, indispensable for an old place like that. But because we’d be running at a loss, we probably would pay no taxes on the rental income. LOL! We might not pay any taxes, period, at the rate things are going!

That’s about it for our future options:

Rent it.
Default on it.

In the present, however, about all we can do is count our blessings. We have two pleasant little houses in acceptable neighborhoods. One of them is paid for. They’re both very pretty, they’re both conveniently close to work, school, and shopping, and they’re both reasonably sound. Things could be worse.

I guess…

Good-bye to the American Dream

Image: dvs’s photostream on Flickr. Creative Commons.

Related posts:

• Sold! Real estate returns to normal in our neighborhood
• The future of residential real estate
• Real Estate: What does the future hold?

Antibal the Great

Okay, the last battle may or may not have been won, but the war has yet to be lost. You’ll recall the previous foray between the human and  Armies of the Ondt, yes? The fight lasted about 24 hours, but ultimately the invaders were repelled.

The little Amazons were undefeated, though. Yesterday evening some of their cousins mounted a new attack. Instead of entering the kitchen directly under the back door, this tribe made its way through a rain-weakened patch of framing at the bottom of the front door. Once in, they marched cheerfully through the living room, jogged left at the hall, and entered the Great Restaurant that is the kitchen floor. Not at all interested in the dishwasher, this bunch descended on some microscopic specks near the dog food dish.

This invasion was particularly jarring because I’d just spent a couple of hours cleaning the kitchen and the floors. Along about 9:00 p.m., after vacuuming, dustmopping, baseboard-scrubbing, and steam-mopping, I was just about to put the gear away, stumble into the bedroom, and fall face-forward into the sack when I came upon a line of troops hiking across the living-room floor.

Damn! I thought the floor was clean. Like, really clean. Not so, though: one of the little ladies was staggering across the threshold with a morsel half her own size.

Here’s a discovery: Home-made glass cleaner, the stuff you concoct with rubbing alcohol, a dab of ammonia, a dash of vinegar, and water, kills Ondts every bit as effectively as gagging, stinking, sickening, dangerously toxic bug spray.

Determined not to go through the Raid misery again, I grabbed a squirt bottle that happened to contain my Windex knock-off brew. The plan, really, was to disrupt the ladies’ pheromone trail, confusing them as to where the grocery store might be. First thing that happened when I sprayed a squirt in the Ondts’ direction, though, was that they curled up and croaked right over, just as though I’d sprayed them with a noxious chemical.

Well, ammonia is not exactly a non-noxious chemical. Neither is rubbing alcohol. However, their fumes dissipate quickly, and the house doesn’t stink of petroleum products for days. Within an hour or so, the odor is gone.

The Ant Amazons…not so much.

Laid down a barrier of boric acid across the threshold. The Ondts joined antennae, reared up on their little hind legs, and danced a can-can, singing “nous nous en fions de toi” in a squeaky ant chorus. They strolled across the boric acid as you and I would stroll across low sand dunes. Unharmed, they proceeded to the kitchen. Meanwhile, outliers found ways to get around the barrier without having to contact the stuff and risk taking it home to the hive.

Found some old, dried-out ant baits. Dropped them right in the middle of Ondt Highway 101, shielded from doggie curiosity by an old fan cage. The raiders evinced not the slightest interest.

Spraying the bedoodles out of them with the imitation Windex, however, eventually beat them back. By the time I stumbled off to bed, not a wandering ant was to be seen.

Probably that’s because it was Ondt Bedtime, too.

This morning, an elegant line strung from the front door through the living room and hall into the kitchen, where the troops were chowing down on two spots flavored invisibly with something.

Sprayed the ladies with more DIY glass cleaner, inflicting vast casualties. Poured a quarter gallon of vinegar into a bucket and topped it off with the hottest water I could extract from the water heater. Mopped the kitchen, hall and living room with that.

Chugged down to the Ace to resupply the ant bait arsenal. Dropped a new brand down in front of a roaming scout. She ignored it. Placed a few more outdoors, near the army’s points of entrance.

All’s quiet on the Living Room Front just now. But it’s very hot outside, 105 as the early autumn sun settles into the west and a bank of cumulonimbus rises above the northeastern horizon. What reason is there to believe that Ondts are any more given to trotting around in the noonday sun than the rest of us?

Related posts:

• Auughhh, Part II: Gaaaaaaaaahhh!
• Crickets and Bug Spray, Oh My!
• Stuff! Where to find storage space for it

In passing that along to you, it occurs to me that I haven’t done a link-love round-up in a long time, mostly because the darned things are time-consuming and time has been in short supply the past few weeks. So…

Out and About in the Blogosphere

Evan, my fave conservative PF blogger, stirred up 24 people enough to respond to his rumination on the question of whether money buys happiness.

No doubt you’ve been hearing all the clichés about the Millennial Generation and how 20-somethings are delaying adulthood and all that. Whether you buy into this particular brand of sociobabble or not, you have to be amazed at Revanche, whose figures at A Gai Shan Life reveal that, while yet to break the big Three-O, she has accumulated an enviable pile of savings and supports her parents, in spite of a spate of unemployment and a move to a new city.

Dr. Dean at Millionaire Nurse is given to writing thoughtful posts. This week my attention is drawn by a discussion of the economics of divorce, particularly in the context of the present recession.

Hang onto your hat! Financial Samurai has got up to some mischief with “Don’t Have Children If You Can’t Take Care of Yourself.” Heh heh heh heh! You’re gonna love this! Reminds me of SDXB‘s plan to make prospective parents buy licenses for child-bearing.

Has your credit-card company stroked your ego by promoting you from your day job as a burger-flipper to a “professional”? Before you accept the lender’s flattering offer of a shiny new “professional” card, better take a look at Karen Datko’s eye-opener at MSN Smart Spending. These outfits always find a way around whatever consumer protection laws Congress can dream up.

Little House in the Valley has a nice post full of wit and wisdom on thinking about your future retirement. Wait! What? You mean I can’t move in with my son and his future wife, who of course will be thrilled to take care of a cranky old bat?

Frugal Scholar posted a neat idea for a new budget category. It’s an interesting strategy for promoting social responsibility in our own small way. If we all did it, we could change the commercial landscape in our towns and cities.

At Out of Debt Again, Mrs. Accountability offers a number of good suggestions for ways to save on your electric bill.

It’s still not too late for a short warm-weather vacation. Eliminate the Muda has a nice article on ways to travel economically and well.

Bucksome Boomer has an interesting rumination about the relationship of affluence or poverty to life skills. Readers chime in with reflections that development of certain life skills is also influenced by geographical region and ethnicity.

OMG! Don’t miss this attention-getting post at Get Rich Slowly! JD relates what happened when a Canadian newspaper reporter offered a number of panhandlers free money in the form of prepaid Mastercard and Visa gift cards. Weirdly, it confirms and de-confirms one’s suspicions.

Simply Forties has really been on a roll this week. I don’t know which of three delightful posts to share with you, so I’m sharing all three: Drinkers Live Longer (yeah! pass the wine, please), a tempting round-up of wonderful reading selections illustrated by a very cool painting, and (gasp! swoon!) a recipe for cherry soup.

If you’re at the point of making the leap from hobby blogging to problogging, check out Budgeting in the Fun Stuff’s comparison of Blogger and WordPress. IMHO, she’s right on about this: if you’re just starting up, even if you don’t think you’ll monetize your site, go with WordPress from the outset.

Over at Bargaineering, Jim has been running a series of “What Is a…” posts, in which he defines and explains, in plain English, various arcane financial terms. One of my favorites is What Is a Ten-Bagger?

Welp, I’ve got to get off the Internet now and clean up the house. This should be enough to keep you busy for a few minutes. Enjoy!

Related posts:

• Anybody wanna write a guest post?
• Thank You, Mrs. Micah!
• Hurrah! Another One Is Back!

This is another site, along with Simple Life in France, that should be in your bookmarks and on your blogroll.

Related posts:

• She’s Back!
• Thank You, Mrs. Micah!
• Link Love…