The Money Pit

It was almost four years ago that Jena, Leslie and I decided instead of adding rooms to our house on Deerbrook that we'd look for a new house. Because we had just paid off our last credit card and were literally rolling in money AND the housing bubble was at it's most inflated, we had 'luck' in finding a behemoth 6 bedroom house in Round Rock with a view for only $197K. We thought it was the most amazing house ever with plenty of rooms for all of our hobbies and junk and it seemed to be in good shape for a ten year old residence. One thing we didn't think to check was the foundation. The hills of western Austin are mostly hard rock and the houses on them are basically attached to the rock so they don't move, but the area east of 35 is the same crappy waxy blackland soil that you find in Dallas, a soil that expands and contracts with the heat and cold, wet and dry but at least in Dallas it's flat. This house was on a hillside with an amazing view for Round Rock especially at night. Well, the cursed manor (so called after everyone has moved out or is trying and all the problems that have come up over the years). First there was problems with toilets, then dying trees, the yard fence, doors not closing or opening, and finally the floor cracking. I agreed with the divorce decree to help Jena sell the house and at first it looked good because the seller's market has slowly come back to Austin after the housing disaster of the last two years. She got the house inspected and it didn't seem bad at first, but then she finally got the foundation looked at. They said the whole front and southeastern end of the house is sliding down the fucking hill! It's not a matter of replacing some tiles in the house, but relevelling the entire house and doing a lot of damage in the process including possibly busting the sewer line or the main water line! We wanted to put it on the market March 1 but now if we get this done, the repair won't start till then and we're looking at another month not to mention having to get the lines checked after. She asked the realtor if we could make getting the foundation fixed as part of the agreement and she said that there's no way we could sell the house as is. We might be able to ask for $203K for it if we get it fixed at least then if we have to lowball around $190K we could still pay back the $8500! it will take to get the foundation fixed! This whole thing makes me want to run away to the mountains and never come back...or just slit my wrist. I really hate this. It's not bad enough that I had to get divorced and lose everything except my friends and job, but now this. I don't know how we're going to pay for this shit. I do know that I'm thinking of never trying to own a house again. They used to say you were 'throwing your money away' on rent, but it doesn't seem that way anymore. Just another bullshit American dream trying to be sold to someone.