Sunday, December 6, 2015

The Nightmare on Rossmere St

For those who have followed all the drama with our home in Colorado Springs you will understand that this house has been nothing but a nightmare for us.

When we bought the house back in 2008 we figured we would be living in it for a long time. Less than 2 years later we were off living in Switzerland and renting out our house in the meantime. Everything was fine for two more years. Then the huge fire swept through the neighborhood and burnt all the neighbors homes to the ground. Ours was badly damaged but it survived. However it was unlivable and we lost good tenants while it took 8 months to repair the fire damage.

Finally we got another renter in who stayed in the house a year and nit picked us every month to pay for random things. We were glad to see him go, but then the next renter who came in had a disabled son in a wheel chair. Why they thought renting our house, which has three stories, was a good idea I will never know. But not even a month after they moved in they were asking us to do repairs to make the home more handicap friendly. We had to put up $6,000 to put in a new front deck since the current one was getting old and they used it a lot with the kids wheel chair. Not too big a deal since we know it needed to be replaced within the next year or so anyways. But then they asked that we build a ramp into the deck which was an extra cost. We told them if they wanted to pay to have a ramp installed and then removed when they left, they were more than welcome to do so. I guess they weren't happy that we wouldn't pay for it so they decided to bail out of their lease with no notice! And usually tenants loose their deposit for breaking lease, but since they claimed they couldn't live their with a handicap son, they got out with no punishment. So then we had no renters for several months. We decided we wanted to sell the house.

The first two offers we got were unbelievably low. Every month we were stuck paying the mortgage with no rental income so we really needed to sell the house. Finally we got a decent offer in January. They wanted to close March 1st so we would only have two more months of mortgage to pay. Everything sounded great! And that's when the roller coaster began.

Two days before closing we were setting up an appointment to do all the paperwork. Then we got the email that the buyers lender couldn't close on time, but that they guaranteed to close by March 30th. I was so upset. I had planned to go out and buy nice champagne to celebrate after signing the documents. Now we would be stuck with another month of mortgage payments. Then towards the end of march we got another email that the lender couldn't close the deal at all. Everything came crashing down. After paying the mortgage on that house for over 6 months with no help from rental income, this was the worst news we could hear.

But the buyer was still interested in the house and offered to rent it until he could secure another loan. We weren't keen on the idea of keeping the home any longer, but we also could not afford to have it sit empty while we searched for another buyer. We decided to let the buyer sign a 12 month rental lease with the condition that he could purchase the home at any time.

Thankfully he has been a fairly easy tenant with no major requests. His one year lease is just about up and we are waiting to hear if he is finally able to buy the house.  I can only hope that this nightmare will soon be over. 

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