Sunday, August 7, 2011

Sell home and rent or stay put?

I am a woman in my late 50's, single, and may retire by year's end. Right now I'm living in a huge Victorian house with 2 cats, both home and pets inherited. The house is falling apart and needs extensive maintenance. I've already invested thousands of dollars in it and it's not much better. However, I like the neighborhood. Most residents there are middle-income working people. It's so quiet sometimes, it's almost creepy. I'd like to get someplace that's also quiet, but I won't have to worry about a leaking roof, backed up plumbing, dry-rot, shoveling snow, mowing 1/4 acre lawn or raking leaves which are big chores for a middle-aged woman. The problems I'm running into are: 1) if I sell and move, the new neighborhood/building may not have the peace & quiet I'm used to, 2) I have a lot of "baggage". An apartment may be too small to contain my "collections". Try getting 2500 sq ft of contents into a 500 sq ft apartment. I've been trying to pare down the house contents by having tag sales, but nobody seems to want to buy trinkets nowadays. I don't want to just throw stuff out or give it away either. Putting it in storage is costly. 3) the housing market is lousy here, to put it bluntly and no signs of it improving in the near future. One realtor told me I'd be lucky to get what my parents paid for it in the 1960's - $30,000, and 4) most places don't allow pets (I have the 2 cats I mentioned which I promised my dying mother I would care for). Any suggestions?

No comments:

Post a Comment