More housing decisions to make, or at the very least, we need to come up with some back up plans...
We have our house on the market as we believe it's adversely affecting our health and we can't really do the renovations we had planned whilst we are living here due to our chemical sensitivity. However, after almost 6 weeks there has been not a single enquiry and some contacts in the Real Estate business here tell us that an almost instanteous stop happened here around a month ago - not a thing is selling anywhere after still having quite a good turnover of properties despite other areas declining markets and rising interest rates.
So, we need to come up with some back up plans in case our house doesn't sell. We realistically can't sit around for too long waiting as we need to consider our health. We have decided we need to set a time limit and then have some back up plans in place to follow.
The two options that we seem to be considering the most at this stage are to rent our house out and rent somewhere else ourselves (as we can't afford to purchase another property if we still own this one), or to stay here and do the renovations - taking as many cautions as we possibly can to reduce their impact on our haelth.
Both plans will cost us money - we certainly wouldn't cover the repayments from any rent received here, so would need to make up the shortfall as well as covering our own rent elsewhere. And doing the renovations VERY slowly and with products designed to cause less reactions, will also add considerably to the project budget. These are short term costs of course... Once the renovations are done, they won't need to be repeated, and if we keep this property we would hope to have some capital growth in the long term. I'm just not very good at looking at these types of long term benefits though - I'm more focussed on what we need to do NOW.
But, an even more important consideration (to me at least!) than money is our health... I don't think you can put a price on it and I want nothing more than to have happy, healthy children. Obviously we don't have a crystal ball to help us know if our sensitivities are going to reduce rapidly or if we are going to have them for the longer term, so we can't really put off making a decision until we know.
We also need to decide if we would ever move back here... If so, then perhaps we could renovate whilst others are living here helping to cover the costs, and then move back once complete and fully offgassed. If not, then I think we need to think about what we really want... Is there any point having this property as an investment if it means we can not buy our own home again in the near future? Do we actually want to buy our own home again? We have often discussed the financial benefits of not living in and owning our own home, as in our financial situation, cash flow is greatly improved if we don't own.. but then that has to be offset against the stability and ability to do whatever we want to our house that comes with owning.
I think a lot more soul searching and talking about this is needed, but I guess in my heart I know we need to move soon, I doubt our house is going to sell quickly, so I think I'm leaning towards moving out, renting the house out and renting something for ourselves. I just don't think I can put us through the renovations wondering if even low VOC products may still cause a reaction - we just don't know and I wouldn't want to get half way through the reno's and realise that we simply HAVE to go...
Making the most of seasonal produce
11 years ago
2 comments:
T, I have to ask, will going to a different house truly mean that you will reduce your sensitivities? Surely a rental property would also be full of chemicals etc? As you can see I truly have no idea the difficulties you are facing.
Whatever you decide to do, I wish you all the best!
Good Question E and thanks for your wishes!
The problems with our current house are that its not really liveable for us as is - its simply far too small for us now, without the fact that the girls are growing - the plan was always to live in it whilst we renovated to make it bigger - from 2 bedrooms (one of which is 6m2 and can barely fit the girls bed and cupboard!) to 3, plus have a living area downstairs - but the reno's are now looking unlikely.
Also, we have an air filter in our house to help filter out some of the nasties in the air (pollution from street, paint/carpet less than 12 months old and most likely still offgassing, dustmites, mould spores etc - all very common in a 120+year old house), but it simply cannot cope with the amount of *stuff* in our house as it is - the air quality is either Very Poor or Poor with the occasional Average!
So in addition to the fact that the house is too small, and we can't really renovate easily, we are also dealing with a *toxic house* so to speak. All things that had we known how sensitive we were when we were looking for a house, meant we would not have bought this house at all :(
The third issue is that our block is extremely narrow - 8m wide, as are all the blocks in our street - which means that due to our neighbours habits (smoking 2 doors up, electrician doing all sorts of tradie things next door, horrendous perfume the other side!) we simply cannot go outside very much at all so we are trapped in our toxic house. If we do go to the park the girls are sooo much happier and healthier breathing in fresh air - we'd live at the park if we could LOL!
And yes, a rental may be just as bad, however we know soooo much more so have an enormous list of things to look for/avoid in any new home. Obviously we can't just move to any old rental so there will be lots of research needed.
If we go down the renting path, we are also planning on renting in a semi-rural area (although we would prefer fully rural if any are available!), so therefore simply having more space between us and our neighbours, less pollution and living in a less built up area should also help. Not to mention that we would ideally love to have our own vegies and lots of room for the girls to run around in! Our vegie gardening here is not at all successful as our yard gets no sun at all in Winter, so nothing grows!
I have no idea if this helps explain our situation any better at all - heck we are still just getting our heads around it all! But unfortunately the positives of this house are far outweighed by the negatives at this point in time :(
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