Can you imagine losing that much money? What a shitty feeling!

That is what Meri and I are faced with when we sell the house so that we can move to Orlando. We are hoping to sell the house for $10k more than we bought it for in hopes of not actually losing that much. Losing $20k is the worst case scenario as we can see it: if we sell the house for what we paid for it.

As we were repainting the trim in three of the rooms that we’ve painted since moving into the house, we were left wondering what’s the point of doing all this “extra” work since we are going to realize a loss even if we get full asking price on the house.

Living in Memphis sucks. Since I have started to hate it when someone says “something sucks” without providing more of an argument as to why, I’ll list just a few of my reasons for saying that. From the high crime rate, unusable public schools, rude people most everywhere you go, blazingly HOT summers, dead foliage in the winters, high property and sales taxes (9.25%!), corrupt politicians and cops (that “everyone” knows about and yet nothing is done about it – just one example, of many, Memphians generally refer to the mayor, WIllie Herenton, as King Willie).

The real estate everywhere sucks, but is very apparent to us right now. This life lesson has taught us a few things. Don’t buy a house unless you know the area. Don’t buy a house unless you are going to live there for a while. Don’t rent a shitty apartment when moving to a new city.

If you are relocating to Memphis, I very strongly urge you to rent an apartment or house or condo. Don’t buy anything until you know the area! Read the paper and watch the news! Talk to as many people as possible about the surrounding areas. My advice would be to look in Germantown. If you have kids, either save up your money and live there or save your money and send your kids to private school! The public school system here really is that bad!

After reading over this post, I can tell that I have a lot of bitterness in losing that much money. But like I told my wife last night, to get us out of Memphis, I think it’s a small price to pay.