I sigh as I type this. My left eyelid is doing a little stress dance as I write this. We got an 80/20 loan. We thought that our broker would listen to our requests of getting a fixed rate loan for us. He got a fixed loan for the 80 part, but not the 20 part. We got a nice, variable APR for the 20 loan. We paid tons of money for that loan, and the broker got lots of lovely kickbacks for it. Maybe our realtors did, too.
6. Our sixth mistake: We bought a house that we liked a lot – but not one that we thought that others might love, too.
The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. We had a lovely, filtered water view of the bay. However, we also lived in a non-HOA community, which meant that our neighbor was skinning deer in his backyard pretty frequently, while the guy across the street from us had a lovely, tarp covered car that never moved, and was probably rusted into the ground.
7. Our seventh mistake: We bought the house at the height of the real estate bubble.
We lost about $60k of our home’s value in a year. Ouch. (Calm down, left eyelid.
8. Our eighth mistake: We bought a house (in a state without Navy ships in it) without keeping the Navy as a career in mind.
We thought that we were done with the Navy. We were going to college and were ready for a civilian life. However, a Caribbean vacation we so enjoyed delivered an unexpected carry-on to us – our now 7 year old son. I quit my civilian job to stay at home with him and we decided that my husband would stay in the Navy.
But we did get out of that mess, thank God. After my husband’s deployment to Iraq, we transferred to San Diego, California. After a year or so, we were able to sell the house with the assistance of the HAP Program (now defunct), which was sponsored by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
