For something that has consumed my family for several years (which has felt like a decade), I must record how we were able to sell the land and the incredible timing of it. Benjamin and I have been working so hard on eliminating our massive amount of debt, none of which is credit card debt, it has felt very consuming, pinching pennies with our number one goal of paying off the land. We had set a very aggressive plan of paying off the land. I was at peace with knowing that there was nothing more we could do, I had "run " the numbers so many times I had it memorized. With this new acceptance I had decided I would make a chain representing each payment to Flagstar until we had the debt paid in full. My sister in law Sarah had reminded me of how I made a chain for Benjamin's last semester in college. I made a link for every day until he graduated. Bella was 3 at the time so when he would come home from school he would lift her up and she would snip a link. I made our "freedom from Flagstar Bank" chain last month.
I talked to my other sister-in-law Robin, who is a Realtor, about the trends in the market and when she thought it would bounce back, like others in her field she said, vacant land is just not selling right now, but usually spring and summer is when most buyers are out looking.
I talked with Benjamin after looking things over and even with our aggressive payment schedule, How long would it take for it to sell? How long (if ever) would we come out even? If we sold it at a loss now it would save us interest even if we could sell it later down the road, hoping to get out from under. The difference was a whopping 6 months of "hoping for a bird in the bush." We decide that taking the smaller bird in the hand would be the wisest course of action. And because we had been paying so aggressively this last year it was going to be a lesser blow.
I told Benjamin of my new plan and asked him what he thought. He said it made sense and that we should pray about it. The following Sunday was a fast Sunday. Which for our church means we skip two meals (typically breakfast and lunch), donate the money we would have used for food to the poor and needy and offer our will to Heavenly Father. It is a time of prayer and meditation. We were, in particular, praying for guidance on what to do with our property. That night Benjamin said he thought we should go ahead and list the land at a loss. He thought we should call our old neighbors who wanted to buy our property for that price years earlier (years earlier wouldn't have worked because we owed too much).
The next day was Monday, I was leaving for Girls Camp, a camp that our church puts on for 12-18 year old girls. Throughout the day I was really feeling the urgency to put a sign on the property. I had called my friend Amber who lives out there to tell her about the new reduced price and how I wanted to get a sign out there. She suggested we should because there was a home that was getting foreclosed on and so there was a lot of traffic of people checking to see the area.
That night at 7:30 pm we drove out to Mescal, put up a sign and hoped for the best. I went to girls camp the next day and I got a call three days later from Benjamin saying that the neighbor wanted to buy the property. I can't help thinking that since the sign was up he knew this price wasn't just for him, and it lit a fire of urgency for him too. In fact I got a phone call from another person interested in the land, all without an internet listing.
The week that we closed, that foreclosed home sold as well, it went for the same price as our land with one less acre and a home on it!
Not the ideal ending, but it rarely is. Our unofficial girls camp motto was " Life is all about how you handle plan B." That could be our motto over this experience too.
