How to escape from a double mortgage situation
I recently introduced myself and this is my first real post. Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place!
My wife and I are currently looking to begin our real estate investment adventure but have a bit of an anchor that is blocking the path a little. We recently moved into a smaller home and are having trouble selling our former (and much larger) home. The home has been listed on the MLS with a couple different agents for over 2 years now. I started to think that we should use this very unfortunate situation as a learning tool for us by looking at it as an "investment deal gone bad" and doing what we have to do to get out of it. Here are some details:
The home is brick on 1 acre of land in a golf course community. It is on a cul-de-sac with great curb appeal. We initially listed it for 535,000 a couple years ago and it is currently listed at 459k. We refinanced it about a year ago and it was appraised at 485k at that time. (We had it listed for 479k during the appraisal process). The home is a 5/4 with 4700 sq ft of finished space and an unfinished 1400 sq ft walkout basement. I don't really want to post what we owe on it but with the closing costs, 6% agent commission and a small buffer for requested repairs, we will pretty much break even at the current listing price.
We have also had the house listed for rent for about 5 months now. We've gotten very little response from that and I don't honestly feel comfortable renting it as it would be a negative cashflow deal. We are desperate though and are looking for a way to eliminate the mortgage payment along with the other expenses of heating/cooling and maintaining the house while it is listed.
Do you have any ideas on how to get out of a property like this? Is there more information you need? (I'm sure there is) Please help us move past this roadblock so we can move on with our future investments!
Thank you!
Rick