(post by BT) Help!!! I have this freaking house in Florida I can’t sell for nothing. I purchased some land in Florida about 4 years ago. Like many other New Yorkers at the time, I had a brand new home built to sell for profit. I paid $230K. By the time the property was completed, I already saw some nice appreciation - it was now worth $280K. Instead of selling right away, I got greedy. Builders where selling new construction at “future pricing”, meaning that the way the market was going the property would be worth $350K just one year later! So, instead of selling, I got a great tenant to whom leased it with an option to buy.

After a quick 12 months, he announced to me he would not be buying. Okay, I said, I’ll put the house on the market and sell it myself… No big deal house still had good equity and I can still make a profit. I went down to Florida and hit every single real estate office in town (at least 50!), no lie. I dropped off my for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) flyer, ASKING for help. You know how many calls I got? None. OMG, I thought, these people are lazy or retarded. I basically begged to be approached by a Realtor. I figured someone had to call me, trying to get the listing and I would find out who was most hungry. Not even one! If this were NY, I would have had 50-plus calls. So I went back to NYC, and left the house with a FSBO sign up front. When I got back I suggested to my mom (who is a broker, too) ‘How about I drive you down to Florida in your car, you keep the car, enjoy the weather and the brand new house, and hold an open house every day until you sell it. She agreed. On the drive down, I was excited thinking, yeah, we’re selling this house NYC-style, baby. We don’t play games, we’re going to show you FL bums how we do it. Once we got there, mom suddenly turned into a beach bum. “Honey, it’s such big house, 10 minutes to the beach. You have to keep it.” WHAT! NO! I have to sell it! “No, I will stay here in winter, you will come down for weekends (total of 3 in the last 2 years!).” So, I got stuck keeping the house.

The market crashed more, and it is now worth $150K, with an adjustable mortgage (because when I purchased the property my intention was to sell, not to keep) and high taxes (they have been reassessed!). 15 months later my single mother told she met someone and was going to move in with them so, “Sorry, maybe you rent it out?” My own mother screwed me? I could have sold, and instead I kept, and now she bounces? So I call the mortgage company a day before the mortgage is due. GET ME OUT OF MY MORTGAGE!!! I will default otherwise, I tell them. I can’t sell it, and I can’t refinance because of negative equity so damn it, help me! “Sorry, sir, you can do a short sale, if you’d like. So, the bank is actually telling me to stop making payments, default on the note, destroy your credit, and then we will help you? What kind of help is that? I am up to date, never late, and this is your advice? Now, that is scary - the bank actually encouraging me to do this. WOW! See related post to learn why.

What are my options? Hmm, let’s see. Renting will only get me halfway to my mortgage payment and can’t really manage tenants in FL from NYC. I think I might just sell it at a loss, and pay the difference out of my pocket, because I am losing by keeping it, anyway. I’ll tell you… I caught the real estate bubble fever like everyone else in a market I did not understand. GET ME OUT OF FLORIDA!!!

This is my lovely house…