Do you think I was ripped off when I sold my home?

What was the interest rate? Did you borrow against your equity when you refinanced?

I kind of doubt that your real estate person ripped you off or kept more than was legal because you were probably in a lawyers office signing all those papers and the lawyer would have noticed.

See..I don’t even freaking know the answers to those questions, @chyna. I guess I need to get to the title company or the tax office in Sedgwick county and do some looking. I want to say the interest rate was 6% but I don’t know for sure.

I’m also starting to wonder if my idiot ex took an equity loan out against the house at some point and didn’t bother to tell me.

I had $2,000 in CD’s I’d saved up over the years. I had it at FNB. They ended up taking all of that money to pay off a business loan my husband had insisted on taking out, and which, being reluctant but dutiful wife I was, I was a co-signer of. The divorce decree said he was suppose to continue making payments, but he didn’t. I didn’t even make the connection between the fact that my CD’s were at the same bank where that loan was. He defaulted and they just wiped me out.

I lost six ways from Sunday in that divorce.

Remember that there was a big recession in 1990/1991. Your house could have lost value or you could have been paying a large interest and most of your payment was going to pay interest first.
I remember my house I bought in 1985 had an interest rate of 10.6.
But I can’t tell you what I had for breakfast this morning.

Those are good points @chyna. Why the hell do I always get caught in the middle of all that shit? Always always always?

Wait..I sold it in ‘95. Refinanced in ‘90 or ‘91.

The refinance could have been for the full amount, including your equity. So you could have essentially started over in 1991 with whatever the appraised value was then, depending on how it was done.

So the refinance is probably the best place to start looking.

(interest rates were lower in 1991 than 1985, but who knows how everything else changed your loan rates at that point)

Can you sue for half of his retirement fund from his job? My ex screwed himself on the house sale. Sometimes I think he did it to spite me but I know in reality he just really is that clueless.

He probably doesn’t have a retirement fund. I do qualify for his SS when he dies. I don’t know that he actually did that, though. I was pretty clueless myself. I was just pulled in a thousand different directions, usually in a panic, trying to figure out what the hell to do next, and how to keep me and the kids off the street.

It depends on the condition of the house when you sold it. Was it in disrepair?

Also depends on the economy at the time you bought it and the time you sold it. If you “bought high” and sold when the economy was bad, that might explain some or all of it.

Depends on a bunch of factors – the market in your area, too. The neighborhood. Stuff like that.

I know what factors come into play concerning the value of a house, @jca. I am not complaining about what the house was worth, or what it sold for.

No, it was not in disrepair. Why would you even ask that? For it to be in disrepair means that we would would have allowed it to happen, and that’s a little insulting, @jca.

We bought the house. It was our first house. We liked it. I sold it for more than we paid for it, and I was happy with that. I just expected to have some money to move the kids and me to another town with, to help us stay on our feet until I started teaching again in the fall (it sold in June,) and it didn’t happen. It was scary. Terrifying, actually. I was almost flat broke.

Everyone has explained what probably happened pretty well. I would bet it was the refinance I did, so I could keep making the payments after the divorce, that killed me. But…I didn’t know. I didn’t know who to talk to, to get advice about it all.

Thanks all.

Oh hai! I found a picture of it! It’s the grey one.

Oh man! I typed in the address and it came up on Zillow and it noted specifically “View photos of this 2 bed, 1.0 bath, 800 sqft single family home located at [my address] Wichita, KS that sold on 6/1/95 for $47500.” I was wrong about the sale price. Anyway, it’s weird that it listed MY sale first thing. It can’t be the last time the house sold!

I guess the people who bought it from you are still there! 21 years!

@Dutchess_III: I tried to answer your question, in the best way I could imagine how, based upon your info. “Could the realtor have ripped me off?” I was giving examples of why I thought a house might not sell for what a seller might think it’s worth.

As far as it being in disrepair, I don’t think that’s an insult. It’s reality. Many people let the paint go, or don’t have money to put a new(er) kitchen, or rehab certain areas, or a whole host of other things that may make a house sell for a lower amount. It’s not an insult, it’s reality. It may not be because of money, it may be because of the owner being busy or not able to handle a renovation. Maybe those were not your issues and maybe your home was in tip-top shape. However, there are many homes that are in need of “TLC” and it’s not that the owner was broke.

It kind of looks like they are, @LuckyGuy! Well, good for them. (Zillow says it’s worth $75K today…Zillow is batshit crazy.)

@jca that’s why Bendrew made a place for the details so people don’t answer just based on the question.
You didn’t ask about renovations, which we did quite a bit of. You asked about “disrepair,” which to me = neglect.

@Dutchess_III: I read the details. I’m sorry for attempting to answer.

Well, I don’t see where in the details you got the idea I was unhappy with the value of the house, or what it sold for. That isn’t even hinted at.

@Dutchess_III: Asking if you were ripped off to me, implies doubt about the selling price.

Most houses increased significantly in value between 1982 and 1995. Even if yours didn’t you will at least have paid off some the loan in that time and the annual statement you receive from your lender will indicate that. Your realtor will have given you a breakdown of costs and profits when he sold the house. This will indicate where the profits went.
Possibly, when you refinanced you switched to an interest payment only scheme which wouldn’t reduce the outstanding loan at all. Again you should check the paperwork given at the time.

Yeah, it was a very, very confusing, frightening time. I don’t know what the hell happened. Paying just $400 a month over 13 years is $62,000 dollars (and before I refinanced we were paying $530) We had to have paid off at least $10,000 of the house. IDK. I guess I can see about digging up the paper work. It was 21 years ago. It really fucked me up.

Did the $400 per month include insurance and property taxes? I know those expenses were rolled into my mortgage and were larger than the actual loan payment.
Property tax in NY is about 4% of assessed value. A $50k home would pay $2000 per year or $167/month just for tax. Insurance and mortgage insurance would be on top of that.

Yes. But still. Interest, escrow, insurance, taxes aside, you would think it would have still paid off $10,000 at the midway point of the original loan.

Lots of speculation here, of course it’s best to find your records if you have them, but we can probably make some best guesses with available information, right?

Interest rates in 1982 and 1991 were a lot higher than they are now (historical information) so your loans were almost certainly at double digit annual rates (10%+ on the remaining balance).

You can checkout an amortization schedule with a few guesses at a lot of places. Here’s the first in google.

Tax rates have probably changed, and looking for a history there is probably tough. But right now it looks like Sedgwick county is 1.317% of assessed value. So probably about $650/yr or so.

No idea on insurance because we’d be looking at a ton of variables there. But let’s say 0.5% of the total each year, or ~$250/yr if we use the full value (less if we figure you didn’t finance the whole thing again).

So $900/yr for insurance and taxes is $75 + your loan for payments. If the total was $400/mo after refinance, let’s say $325 was for your loan.

$45000 at 10% for 30 years is still ~$395 a month just for the mortgage. After 4 years you will have paid off $1150 in principal (the rest went to interest) and you still owe ~$43,850.

That really doesn’t fit your loan, but you can see how slowly things get paid off in those first few years. So your payments after the refinance aren’t going to add up to much equity.

That doesn’t mean you didn’t have any, especially if that refinance was for a smaller amount, say $35000. Then you should have gotten something out of the sale.

If you want to pursue it, I’d call the bank the loan was with and see if you can just get a statement showing the payoff amount from their records. That’s really what’s going to tell you how much was owed when it was sold and then you can figure where the balance went.

Since you have had training as a realtor, I would assume you know that for most of the early years of a mortgage, you are paying the interest mainly and only a small amount toward the principal. So you would not have built up much equity from the first mortgage and then refinanced which would have started the mainly interest pay-offs again. Selling the house for $3,000 above what you paid and the agent getting $2,800 sounds to me like you were not ripped off; just had an unhappy outcome.

Yes, and I know this from owning homes, too @janbb.

It’s starting to come back. I remember talking to the Realtor and telling him I needed to walk away with at least $5000, after commission (I think…$5000 was actually what my husband got from his sick leave. I got the house in exchange.) It seems like we sat down and worked the numbers and came up with a sale price that was doable. I just wish I could remember the the numbers, what they were. I’m not usually so far off in financial calculations. I was calculating constantly in those days, and realistically, and things almost always came out ~ or less what I expected, so I could plan. Except in this disastrous case.

I also remember having to take less than I wanted, which would affect my net by a few thousand, but I still expected at least $2,000 to start over with. I didn’t expect to walk away with absolutely 0.

I’ll have to see if I can dig up the name of the bank. It’s in the back of my head, because I wrote checks to them every month, but it’s not coming to me. And dig up the other records.

Man, I’m rehashing all of this old stuff, things I haven’t thought of in 20 years and some stuff is starting to come back.

Yes, my ex got $5,000 cash from his sick leave accrual. We thought I could get at last $5,000 on the house, so there was that.

When I met with the Realtor I explained all of this, told him I needed $5,000 clear on the house. He started working numbers. He mentioned his commission, but he came up with a price that would satisfy everyone, and that he thought the house could sell for.
Well, it didn’t sell, and didn’t sell, and didn’t sell. For a year it didn’t sell.
He had been sending various and sundry Realtors from his firm in, and I finally got a little frustrated and talked to him. He took over and had it sold within a week. However, I did have to drop the price about $3,000 to get it done.
I was still expecting at least $2,000 and you can’t imagine the shock, the blow, at closing when I was told…Zero. Nothing. They started listing off all the reasons why that last $2,000 wasn’t mine, but I could barely hear them. It was like they all receded to a pinpoint in the distance. My mind was just reeling. I remember saying, “Will you excuse me please,” and walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I cried so hard, trying to be silent at the same time. I was gripping that white porcelain sink so hard part of me was afraid I’d rip it out of the wall, another part of me really wanted to do just that. God, I cried. Silently I screamed.
I finally took some gasping breaths, washed my face and tried to compose myself to go back in and face them.
It was very quiet when I got back to the table. I think I failed at being as quiet as I had tried to be, but I did try. It was an intensely personal, privately devastating moment for me. I would have rather been alone.

Well, this has been a fun trip down memory lane. I need a beer!

I would say rather than the realtor ripping you off, it was the judge/lawyer who negotiated your divorce settlement.

@Earthbound_Misfit Well, I would say in the judge or lawyer’s defense that real estate values wax and wane and the profit you can make from selling real estate can vary tremendously. If the cycle had gone another way, Dutchess might have made $20,000 and then her Ex might have felt ripped off. Sometimes in a divorce it makes sense to split everything 50/50 and sometimes you just strive for seeming equivalencies.

Yeah. IDK. How do you split some things, tho? I mean, we had an Aerostar van that was paid off. I guess we could have sold it and I could have gotten a different, like, crappy car, somehow, with my half, but I needed that van. I had a daycare.

Oh yeah – I agree which is why I said sometimes you try for equivalencies. Not easy.

Given the crazy interest rates between 1985 and about 1992/3, I’m amazed you were able to come close to even on the sale of your house. I knew a lot of people in that time period who walked away from their houses. Interest rates got as high as 18% up here. I have friends who are still trying to come even on houses they bought in 1988/1990 – and that’s with our super-crazy real-estate bubble over the past 5 years. Those interest rates put a serious hurt on people.

@Dutchess_III: Why did you say “I know what factors come into play concerning the value of a house, @jca. I am not complaining about what the house was worth, or what it sold for.” and then you’ve been doing just that?

Wait, the sale was 21 years ago. What is the statute of limitations? If it’s way past, what is the point of spending a lot of time and energy (not to mention psychological aggravation) on this? It would be best to forget it and move on. You have a lot more life to live.

(On the other hand, if the law still lets you make a claim and you’re pretty sure that you were ripped off, research on…)

@janbb, but surely @Dutchess_III has some info that shows how this decision was reached. There must be some documentation that shows how the value of the property was determined? Purchase price, interest rate paid, equity, current value etc. That calculation must have taken place and if it didn’t, then the people doing the work didn’t do their jobs properly. @Dutchess_III have you looked back at the paperwork provided when this decision was handed down?

Please read all of the following words @jca:
I was satisfied with the sale at the time.
I still am.
I don’t think I couldn’t have gotten any more.
I just missed something major in my calculations. I guess the Realtor did too.
I was just trying to figure out what happened to the money I was supposed thought I was to get.
After talking to you all, I’m sure there were valid reasons and no one was trying to rip me off. I messed up.

Gosh, I haven’t seen the paperwork in a couple of decades @Earthbound_Misfit. As I said I need to start tracking that stuff down.

As @2davidc8 asked, does it matter now @Dutchess_III? Is this to satisfy your curiosity or do you need to find this information for another reason? Sometimes things are best left to history. If you do find out your agreement was unfair OR the realtor did the wrong thing, are you going to take any action? If you aren’t, it would seem like a recipe for breeding resentment.

Just to satisfy my curiosity @Earthbound_Misfit. I mean, if I find something “wrong” sure I’d talk to an attorney. But I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on something like that.

But I’m sure I won’t find anything wrong.

And I don’t have “brooding resentment.” I just thought of this last night. Outside of this question I haven’t really continued to think about it, except trying to figure out how to track down the paperwork.

@Dutchess_III: “I was satisfied with the sale at the time. I still am” Yet you cried hysterically in the bathroom and you are asking here in a multitude of ways if you were ripped off and if there’s anything you can do about it. OK. Maybe it’s just me but if I’m satisfied with something I don’t cry in the bathroom and I don’t ask if I was ripped off and ponder if there might be something I could do about it.

Please read the following words @jca. All of them:

Yes, I did cry hysterically. I thought I was going to have $2000 to help move. It was a huge, crushing blow that I did not.

After I posted in a comment on that old memory to Coloma in a thread last night I thought…WHY didn’t I get that money? Where did it go? What about my equity? There was SO much going on at that time, not the least was that just a few weeks earlier, my ex had finally sent our now-16-year-old daughter home from Seattle (where he had run to 2 years earlier,) because she was 7 months pregnant. He figured I could handle it better than he could. Along with the rest of his children. That year, and the next, passed in a blur.

As I said Here, just a couple of posts up: “After talking to you all, I’m sure there were valid reasons and no one was trying to rip me off. I messed up.”

I just need to track down the paperwork to satisfy my own curiosity, if I ever get around to it.

Please stay tuned. And try to stay focused.

@Dutchess_III: I am extremely focused, believe me. I am extremely focused on how you ask questions on here repeatedly and then argue with people who point out conflicting statements or who make statements that you disagree with. Others have stated on other threads that they feel the same way about your threads.

Yes, I know you’re just repeating what others have said, in other threads. You forgot to mention the rumor going around that I’m a man hater, too, but I’m sure you’ll parrot that ASAP.

Please feel free to point out where I made conflicting statements, or where I disagreed with statements others have made in this thread. And please read carefully to determine if I was actually disagreeing, or trying to clarify my point, or trying to clarify a question someone else had or asking someone to clarify a point they made.

If you have trouble, or questions, I’ll try to help you understand. But you’ll have to read.

Look at the closing docs if you still have them. You may have paid $1,000 for a closing attorney, mortgage points for your buyer, prorated insurance and taxes, and the commission may have been more. I my area in the 70s-90s the residential customary re commission was 7%, but it is always negotiable. You may have agreed to more. Real Estate agents include some nasty snakes.

@Dutchess_III: I’ve not been rude to you but you have to me, over and over on this thread. Add to that you accuse me of doing something or preparing to do something and I have no idea what you are talking about.

@MollyMcGuire I’ll see if I can track them down.
I’ll update this when I get more information.

No luck. They purge the documents after 7 years. I mean, I could get tax appraisals and deeds and such, but no closing documents or anything. They must be around here somewhere. I recently cleaned out my filing cabinet, put all the documents in a box and put them upstairs. (I gave the cabinet to my son.) I know I have all the documents from when I bought this house just 3 years later…but I just don’t recall seeing the ones from the sale of the other. Oh well. I’ll pull them out one of these days and look through them. I always find surprises when I do that.
Thanks for all of the information, guys