Wife wants to sell house and move, bad reaction when we will take a loss

[Depression = 72% of members]

My wife is wanting to move to a different neighborhood. The one we live in isn't totally terrible, but there are some shady characters around and there is litter around frequently. We found out this weekend that our house would sell for less than what we paid for it only 3 years ago, and not only that, but after realtor fees and closing costs we would take a ~$10k hit when we sold the house. And after that, we would still have to come up with a 5% down payment on a new house. So she was understandably upset. But you know BPD, when she gets upset she has a total meltdown, talks about how everything is horrible with the house and the neighborhood and how she "has to get out right now", and how she can't have our son living in this neighborhood. She wanted to take our son and go stay at a hotel until her savings ran out, just to get out of the house. I told her that if she left with him, I would call the police. And I said if she took off, we would be getting a divorce. She did end up staying put last night, but dear Lord, what a stressful day!  :'(

[guitarguy09]

My wife is wanting to move to a different neighborhood. The one we live in isn't totally terrible, but there are some shady characters around and there is litter around frequently. We found out this weekend that our house would sell for less than what we paid for it only 3 years ago, and not only that, but after realtor fees and closing costs we would take a ~$10k hit when we sold the house. And after that, we would still have to come up with a 5% down payment on a new house. So she was understandably upset. But you know BPD, when she gets upset she has a total meltdown, talks about how everything is horrible with the house and the neighborhood and how she "has to get out right now", and how she can't have our son living in this neighborhood. She wanted to take our son and go stay at a hotel until her savings ran out, just to get out of the house. I told her that if she left with him, I would call the police. And I said if she took off, we would be getting a divorce. She did end up staying put last night, but dear Lord, what a stressful day!  :'(

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[Vindi]

talk to your wife again, when things settle down, whether its in a few hours or a day or two.

Selling you house would be a huge issue, and who is to say what type of neighborhood you could end up moving too, and it may take a long time to sell your house. I know it took me 2 years a few years back, and I too felt "stuck".

Do you want  to move, and what is your feeling on taking a loss on the house? And, you have to add in the expenses of moving, either renting a truck or hiring a mover, that all takes lotsa time and $$ too.

Plus, your home will take at least a few more months to be on the market then closing takes 60 to 90 days, so no matter what, your wife must understand you can't just up and leave and go to a new home. Its a long process and i wish you luck!

[guitarguy09]

Thanks for your post Vindi. She has wanted to move for a while now and though we might take a loss, I think we will end up trying to sell anyways. We want to get into a different neighborhood, and there are a couple of suburbs closer to my work that have a good reputation and we can still get a lot for our money. I will definitely stress patience in this whole process, because I didn't know it could take that long to sell a house and close on it. The good thing is that we are not in any bad financial situation so if someone buys it, they don't really have an ability to really make us go down on the price. I also did not calculate the moving expenses. Thanks!

[an0ught]

Hi guitarguy09,

keep in mind this is less a SET issue - it is one no doubt in part - but at least and likely much more a validation issue.

Validate - all dirty neighborhood - disaster - totally sucks the economy here is so bad that houses don't appreciate - we are stuck - the end of the world - what could be worse - don't like - we could live so much nicer - frustrated - angry - always bad luck

Be clear where your boundaries are. Financial freedom is not to be underestimated and can be easily lost making other choices much harder.

[Mono No Aware]

But you know BPD, when she gets upset she has a total meltdown, talks about how everything is horrible with the house and the neighborhood and how she "has to get out right now", and how she can't have our son living in this neighborhood.

Part 1: BPD

My uBPDw does similar things, setting up can't win situations using minor irritations that can't be easily fixed. I have called it Making Volcanoes out of Molehills - and guess what, they all have this common ending that involves either her or me leaving. It's a clever ruse that the pwBPD's dysregulated thought process comes up with to nuke the relationship.

One tactic I have been working on to the defuse the sudden-leaving blowups is repeating a calm mantra: "It's not good to make major decisions when you are upset." Usually this has two main reactions from her... .

A) a sudden topic switch to other,completely unrelated, triggers and/or minor irritants newly upgraded to major triggers.

B) an attack based on my obvious stupidity and/or evil intentions of minimizing the danger of the original thing that is being flimsily propped up as such a huge reason for leaving.

Both can be dealt with using the simple "I do not want to fight/argue" boundary, but the important victory is to disrupt the dysregulation focus on the main volcano, which can lead to a dispersal of negative energy.

On a really good day, I may get lucky and successfully broach the topic of "Why are you getting so upset?", which allows me to work in the dreadfully taboo topic of Therapy.



Part 2: Real Estate and The Changing Neighborhood

I own a house in a neighborhood that went downhill. I moved us out of state (long story... . BPD involved... . ) and have been using a recommended-as-trustworthy property mgmt company to rent it out. For the first 3 years I made like $18 a month but didn't get foreclosed.

All neighborhoods change over time. I know of one locally where I live now that was a glittering new middle-class-posh development some 15-20 years ago, now it's sliding downhill. I drove around it garage-saling and pointed out to my young son the unkempt lawns, broken down cars, scattered trash, and gang-sign graffiti that mark the not-so-good side of town. But I know that eventually, if the economy holds up, rising real estate prices will tempt landlords (usually those burned by bad tenants) to sell to hard-working folk who are not well-off but will take much better care of the property - and the neighborhood will rebound.

The neighborhood where my old house is in is being revived now, apparently enough hard-working owners bought up the foreclosures and not the slumlords. They tell me there's not even any boarded-up houses on that block now.

If your neighborhood is getting bad, and by bad I mean steadily rising car & house burglaries, shootings, foreclosed houses boarded up and then broken into, gang graffiti everywhere, son getting bullied/befriended by gang-banger kids at school and on your block, etc, then maybe you should research ways to get the Fk out.

If the economy tanks then it'll free-fall from not-so-good to ghetto and then to slum. Worse case: there are parts of Detroit that are nearly abandoned and the police & fire depts simply don't go into. I know a guy whose house there would not sell for $1.00 and he just abandoned it.

But if it's a case of an ordinary working-class neighborhood (I live in one like this now) where there may be a few bad apples then the best thing to do is to throw a ton of effort into improving your house and landscaping over the next few years. This will spark a certain amount of keeping-up-with-the-Jonses amongst at least a couple of your neighbors and the neighborhood as a whole will incrementally improve real estate market values... . pricing out the slumlords who rent to the bad apples. If you have a bad apple owner, be a dick and call the city on them for unkempt lawns and dead cars parked in the street. The power-trippers who work for the city love to fine people for stuff like that. Or be a good guy and help them out with cleaning their place up, maybe they're elderly and can't push a mower any more.

I got my uBPDw excited about gardening this weekend, she's VERY susceptible to keeping-up-with-the-Jonses of course and she saw our new neighbors planting flowers. So it's a win-win.

But no matter what: don't let Ms. BPD make the decision to move when she's dysregulating. Run a search on this for about Moving and you'll see the pattern.

[guitarguy09]

an0ught - I agree, it is more of a validation issue. I think that she thinks I don't see any problem with the neighborhood. It is possible that by doing more validating, I can more easily get my point across.

Mono No Aware - Thank you so much for your outlining of how to handle the situation. I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in this. I believe our neighborhood is the one like you described with working class people and a few bad apples. The conditions in the neighborhood have basically stayed the same in the last three years and I don't feel it is going downhill. I think we will start to do some improvements (outdoor specifically) that would help to boost the house and neighborhood values. I think I will start by planting some shrubs in front of the house.

Update on the situation - She has since calmed down and apologized for her part in it. I apologized too (said some things to her in frustration that I didn't really want to). We took a much more level headed approach last night. We will look at possibly renting out the house, or we also have a different realtor coming tonight who hopefully can give us a different opinion on how much the house is worth.

[guitarguy09]

Another update! We found a new realtor, one who is more aggressive. She said that because the market is really heating up, if we put the house on the market in May we could ask for right around what we want! 

[Mono No Aware]

Well if you're going to go for it, go for it. Check out that realtor though, I have a distrust of the fast movers who will just tell you what you want to hear. Get her to show good comps to back that claim up.

In the meantime be ready for snap dysregulations during the stresses of simultaneous selling & buying as well as moving. Oh man, the day we signed on our new house my uBPDw nearly lost it and torpedoed the whole deal. It was touch-and-go until we settled into the comfy chairs at the title company and our agent started cooing at our baby, that calmed her down.

[guitarguy09]

Thanks, we will probably go for it since we can get what we paid for our house or a little more, and then the down payment won't be quite as bad. The realtor showed me a few comps in the area, one of them selling within a timeframe of two weeks at the price she wants to start ours at. I don't think the price is too astronomical since our house is in really good condition. I do fear the dysregulation when it comes to moving time and figuring out times to get another mortgage, but more importantly it gives my wife something to focus all her energy on rather than hating on my family or being bothered by people for very small things.