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Our Flood Story
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The next few days were a blur. We were staying with family in Alburnett, IA, and made the trip into town every day to deal with various things. Several times we just stood at the edge of the water on J Ave, as far as the National Guard would let us go, and look toward our house. We watched as our boat floated a bit away from the trailer in which it was tied to, and we saw the water go as high as our 5 ft chain link fence in front of our house. When the water crested on Friday, we saw the line that had been painted on the street at the crest - 100 yards up the street from us. We filled out our FEMA application. We tried to stay busy as we kept in touch with our friend who kept monitoring his own house and the neighborhood from a closer vantage point.
Sunday, June 15th, the city announced that it would be allowing people back into their homes as soon as they were inspected and cleared. We stood in line at the Abbe Center only to find out we were actually supposed to be at Harrison, and stood in line at Harrison along with a few hundred other people waiting to be let in their homes. Great thanks to my mother for running to Burger King for us – they had no food and no water set up for anyone and people were getting frustrated and angry. We finally gave up for the day. We could walk to about 50 feet from our house, but that is as far as we could go since there was still a puddle in the intersection of J and 11th. As we stood at the other side of the intersection taking pictures, we noticed a fire department truck pull onto J and slow down in front of our boat, which was back on its trailer and sitting, literally, in the middle of the street. We got his attention and he allowed us to get the boat out of there, sparing the city the cost of having it towed and us the cost of that tow that would be passed directly on to us. While we got the boat we were able to snap a few pictures of the house and see where the water line was, and Zach was allowed to enter the garage to get a hitch. The street was a muddy mess at that point, with muck that would literally suck at your feet. We moved the boat to my aunt’s house and called the insurance agent to take a look at it. Unfortunately, the plug was not in the boat and so the flood water and muck filled the engine compartment and the cuddy cabin.
Monday, June 16th, the city decided that having people wait around was a bad idea and they were not going to allow anyone else other than those that had been called on Sunday to enter their houses. They were going to continue to inspect and would post a list of houses approved for re-entry on a website Tuesday morning. We went into town anyways, and bought some heavy duty work boots and cleaning supplies. Our neighbors to the side of us and along our alley on 11th Street had been cleared for re-entry the previous day, and were at work getting things out of their houses. While we were not officially cleared, we took some boards off of our privacy fence and snuck into our house from the neighbor's yard to take a look. We snapped a lot of pictures of the 35” water line and the muck it left behind. We had to slide over the refrigerator to get into the kitchen, as it had flipped on its back. Nothing was where we had left it. The dishwasher detergent was in the bathroom, lamps were on the floor, dressers were on their back. My couches were tilted on top of my coffee table, and brown was the color scheme everywhere. We spent some time going through clothes and hanging them out to dry with the hope that with the sanitizing wash cycle of our family’s washer we would be able to salvage them. We opened all of the windows. A state trooper saw us and stopped by, and told us we should probably move on. They knew that while we may have been allowed for re-entry, we were probably pushing it. We left and prepared for the next day.
The next day we were on the official list for re-entry. Funny, since nobody stepped foot in our house to inspect – we would have seen the bootprints in the mud. A pair of men stopped by in the afternoon to look at our first floor and gave us a yellow, limited entry status. Zach and I spent the day hauling all of our big items out to the curb - couches, tables, beds, mattresses, toy boxes, lamps. My great-grandparents china cabinet that was at least 50 years old. Our matching dressers that were only 9 months old, along with our new mattress. The custom TV cabinet that Zach spent hours building out of old wood from the old roof. Most drawers in dressers and such were too engorged in water to open so they were tossed without seeing what contents were inside.
On a lighter note, there were a few notable things that were saved:
• 3 tubs of holiday decorations. I had pulled these out of the basement before we made our departure and put them on the couches. Even though they didn’t have lids, all 3 managed to float and stay upright when they landed, even though the couches got stuck on the coffee table.
• The coffee table itself. It’s made of marble with teak-wood legs. It got one scratch from the couch, but, can be fixed. Aside from a good cleaning, it lived!
• Zach’s collection of Hot Wheels from when he was a little boy. These were “stored” on top of the china cabinet which miraculously didn’t tip over. Unfortunately, X’s hot wheel collection was on the floor of his room and rusted by the time we got to them.
• X’s rocking chair built by his great-great-grandpa. When we returned to the house when there was 6 inches of water in the house, I had grabbed the chair – it had floated from X’s room into our bedroom – and put it on top of the headboard of our bed.
Over the next 6 days, with the extraordinary help of family, we were able to get everything out of the house, strip the carpet, and tear out the drywall and insulation in both the house and the garage. My stepbrother Larry fixed both of our flatbed trailers which were completely submerged and helped tremendously in storing and moving things over the summer. When we were done, there was nothing left to do but wait.
Our house had been on the very edge of the 500 year flood plain, which we were not aware of until two days before the flood. Our mortgage company had not required flood insurance and stated directly on our mortgage papers, "Not in flood plain, no flood insurance required." A call to our insurance agent confirmed that we were out of luck. We filed a claim for sewer backup (a $5,000 rider) to no avail. Even though I had video of the water coming up out of the storm sewer, the flood overrides that occurrence.
Ironically, we lost our boat in the flood as well. The plug was not in it, and it took on water (muck, actually) in the engine compartment and cuddy cabin. The boat still floated, and while tethered to the trailer, actually landed back on the trailer in the right position. Our boat insurance considered it a total loss, as a boat shop in town could not get it started and would not mess with it because of all the aftermarket parts on the engine. Boat insurance is worth every penny!
We had applied for FEMA assistance before we were allowed back in the house, and the inspector came the 2nd day we were allowed back into the house to inspect. He was an odd character, and asked questions such as how many TV's and radios we had in each room. He insisted on knowing if we had a chainsaw, asking it at least 5 different times. Finally we told him we had a sawzaw, which we pretty much used as a chainsaw. I took a peek at the form he was filling out on his computer, and basically these were all yes and no things he had to ask, as well as identifying if each room was repairable. Funny, he had every room as a no for repairable except for the bathroom - not sure why the bathroom would be fixable if everything around it is not. At any rate, the following Tuesday was a very good day. I checked our bank account and a deposit of $28, 600 had been deposited. This was the maximum amount of FEMA assistance that was given. That deposit created smiles all around and a huge sigh of relief. While the amount was nowhere near the amount it would take to fix our house, it was something to get us through the next few months, to make decisions, to try and move on. As FEMA repeated over and over, this money is to to make you whole again, it does not make everything right--they are completely right in that, it does not, but it gives you a little glimmer of hope that perhaps you will be able to move on.
The next few weeks were a blur. I was off of work. We had nothing to do at the house. The city had no idea what it was doing. We were living with my mother-in-law, who was doing her best (bless her heart) to put up with our dogs. Our animal family was scattered across the city, and we had nothing to do but plan and scheme on how to get out of this. We had a $65,000 mortgage on a house that was now worth very little. We'd spent the last 10 years remodeling the house and had finally gotten to a point where the major projects were done and we were really enjoying our house, and looking forward to a serene, relaxing summer. Since that was literally ripped out from under us (or, went down the toilet as it may be), we were pretty realistic about our future with the house. $28,600 would not come close to fixing it to the finish level that we were accustomed, even with Zach doing all of the work. Besides, neither of us had the heart to do it all over again.l
We had planned to move out of state before X made a move to middle school. We began exploring the possibility of moving now, or soon. Basically it would be cutting our losses, and I believed would be a better emotional environment that living in Cedar Rapids for the next 5 years. It is going to take a lot of time for the city to recover, and frankly with how the city was approaching helping homeowners, it was not something we were interested in hearing about every night on the news. We made the decision to move our departure up, and went RV shopping to facilitate a place to live while we decided where to move and to literally live in while we built a new house. Once we made this decision, we selected and purchased a new 5th wheel RV within a week.
We moved the RV onto our property the next week, and worked on getting electric run to the property via a temporary electric pole. That was a chore itself, and took 3 calls to the city who said they'd call the electric company to approve the turn-on and finally an in-person visit for Zach to stand there while the call was made to finally get Alliant to come and turn the electric on. Once that was done we had an air conditioned home base, and we began using up some of the gift cards that had been sent to furnish the rest of the RV. The nice thing about the RV is that it comes furnished. Our first purchase was a real mattress identical to the one we used to have in our bed, followed by kitchen stuff galore. While we didn't have to buy couches or TVs, we had to buy everything else; sheets, towels, dishes and everything else a kitchen entails.
Zach and I took a scouting trip to Greenville, SC during one of my client visits to that area. While there we found that Greenville was not for us, but as we wandered to Charlotte, NC, and Asheville, NC (and everywhere in between,) we kept going back to the Asheville area. Something about that area speaks to us, and we made our final decision that we wanted to head that way to make our home. We may end up somewhere between Asheville and Charlotte so I can utilize either airport, but our plans now have us heading there before the end of the year as the weather gets colder in Iowa.
During the summer we kept close contact with our mortgage company--from an initial visit with them the week after the flood to many phone calls later. We approached it that we were in this together...now that the house was worth so much less than it had, they owned more of the house than we did (in fact, really they owned all of it. Finally my husband had a meeting with them and told them we needed a reduced payoff amount that someone would actually pay for our house. We had had several people call us interested in the house, but we had no amount we could give them other than $65,000--a number nobody would be willing to pay. Our representative at the bank told us he would take it to the higher-ups and get back to us.
Two weeks later we had a couple stop and we took them on a tour of the house and garage. We were extremely honest with them, telling them what our mortgage was, what we thought the house was worth and that in the end it all depended on what the bank would take for it. At the time, a house just down the block had sold for $20,000--basically the cost of the lot. They were looking for a flooded house to buy, fix up, and ultimately live in. The stopped the next day with a friend of theirs that was a contractor, who apparently approved of the house and told them that our house would take a lot less than others in the area, and they made an offer on the house of $40,000.
Zach went to the bank the next morning and told them we had an offer on the house, and what the offer was. They told us that the bank president had agreed to lower the mortgage to $50,000--shocking, to say the least. We told them that we could throw in some things to see if the buyers would go up--our Jeep, a snowblower, a microwave, the fence panels--but we had no cash we could put into this to make this even. They went back to the bank president and got it down to $48,000, final offer. The buyers were still interested, and made a verbal agreement to purchase the house.
We had set a date of Nov 8th to begin our move east. The buyers were interested in moving the purchase quickly, and we began planning for where we would move in the interim. There was one mobile home park in town that was allowing 5th wheels, but the price was 2 times the regular lot rent, essentially price gouging flood victims. Most of the campgrounds here close in October and do not offer sewer service. Zach was really not interested in having to pack up and move the RV every three days to dump all the water and such, and with us cooking in the RV as well as the bathing, that really was not an option. We approached our neighbor about allowing us to park in his driveway and use his sewer line, and talked to the buyers about utilizing the electric until we left. Everyone agreed and we had a plan in place for where to live in September and October.
Where we sit now
Currently, the plan is still in place to leave for Asheville on November 8th. I've cleared this with my work to have the week where I can work from the road.
The purchase still appears to be happening, but with some snags. They provided a purchase agreement, which our lawyer is looking at. While it sounded at first that their dad was financing this and liquidating some assets, things apparently have changed and it looks like their dad is putting down his own house as collateral against a loan. They tried getting a loan and banks are not giving out loans to fix up flooded house without collateral right now (probably a smart idea.) So hopefully we will know more next week. Even if this sale doesn't go through, I have no doubt that the house will sell at a price of $48,000. Basically they are buying the land for $20,000, and paying another $28,000 for an awesome garage that had no lasting damage from the flood. The house is free and they can do whatever they want with it. If we were doing it we would have it bulldozed and start over, but that's just us.
We are in the process of moving our few belongings to my mom's garage for the winter. We'll be back for them in the spring.
We are still in shock that this has happened, but know that we have to control where we go from now. We were not prepared to move yet; however, it is the best thing we can do for our family right now. It will not be an easy or quick road; that route would have had us purchasing a house already. But, it is the best choice for us to continue toward our dream and our dream house. I would not wish this on anybody, and any insurance I now purchase will not be at an insurance agent's suggestion...I have bunches of questions that are now important to me from this experience. I heard a figure of 95% of homeowners affected by this flood did not have flood insurance. We are not the only ones struggling with how to rebuild our lives.
On Wednesday, June 11th, our neighborhood was under a voluntary evacuation order to vacate our home because of expected historic flooding from the Cedar River. The expected crest of the river was 24.5 feet at that time, about 4 ft above the record set in 1929 and 5 feet above the 1993 flood that we all remember so well. Sam left a client in Atlanta early to come home and help monitor the basement, and arrived home at 11:00 pm. At 6 a.m. we were awakened by a thunderstorm as well as the sump pump running in the basement. 14 minutes later, the power was cut to the neighborhood, rendering the sump pump useless. We spent about 40 minutes bailing and waiting for family to bring a generator over before coming to the realization that the basement was a lost cause. We spent a frantic hour in a controlled panic packing, loaded the dogs and cat up in the Jeep and went to my moms house. (Thankfully X had spent the night with his grandma, and did not witness the chaos of that morning.) Zach returned about 20 minutes later and water had swamped the alley and the street and was starting to pool around the house.
We made an unauthorized return visit to the house that afternoon around 1:00 PM to retrieve the bearded dragons. We'd left them as there was just no room in the Jeep, and we knew that X would be heartbroken if we lost them. To get to the house, we had to wade through chest-high water in the street. After a brief stop at the boat to get life jackets and the inflatable tube, we entered the house to find the carpet floating in 6-8 inches of water in the first floor. We got the lizards, a Nintendo DS, and a few of Xander’s papers from school and waded back to our friend’s house 2 blocks away. We ran into a few of our neighbors at the edge of the water, who were anxious to hear what conditions were like at our house. Needless to say they were not thrilled to hear about the water in our first floor – their house was ½ block closer to the river than we were.
The next few days were a blur. We were staying with family in Alburnett, IA, and made the trip into town every day to deal with various things. Several times we just stood at the edge of the water on J Ave, as far as the National Guard would let us go, and look toward our house. We watched as our boat floated a bit away from the trailer in which it was tied to, and we saw the water go as high as our 5 ft chain link fence in front of our house. When the water crested on Friday, we saw the line that had been painted on the street at the crest - 100 yards up the street from us. We filled out our FEMA application. We tried to stay busy as we kept in touch with our friend who kept monitoring his own house and the neighborhood from a closer vantage point.
Sunday, June 15th, the city announced that it would be allowing people back into their homes as soon as they were inspected and cleared. We stood in line at the Abbe Center only to find out we were actually supposed to be at Harrison, and stood in line at Harrison along with a few hundred other people waiting to be let in their homes. Great thanks to my mother for running to Burger King for us – they had no food and no water set up for anyone and people were getting frustrated and angry. We finally gave up for the day. We could walk to about 50 feet from our house, but that is as far as we could go since there was still a puddle in the intersection of J and 11th. As we stood at the other side of the intersection taking pictures, we noticed a fire department truck pull onto J and slow down in front of our boat, which was back on its trailer and sitting, literally, in the middle of the street. We got his attention and he allowed us to get the boat out of there, sparing the city the cost of having it towed and us the cost of that tow that would be passed directly on to us. While we got the boat we were able to snap a few pictures of the house and see where the water line was, and Zach was allowed to enter the garage to get a hitch. The street was a muddy mess at that point, with muck that would literally suck at your feet. We moved the boat to my aunt’s house and called the insurance agent to take a look at it. Unfortunately, the plug was not in the boat and so the flood water and muck filled the engine compartment and the cuddy cabin.
Monday, June 16th, the city decided that having people wait around was a bad idea and they were not going to allow anyone else other than those that had been called on Sunday to enter their houses. They were going to continue to inspect and would post a list of houses approved for re-entry on a website Tuesday morning. We went into town anyways, and bought some heavy duty work boots and cleaning supplies. Our neighbors to the side of us and along our alley on 11th Street had been cleared for re-entry the previous day, and were at work getting things out of their houses. While we were not officially cleared, we took some boards off of our privacy fence and snuck into our house from the neighbor's yard to take a look. We snapped a lot of pictures of the 35” water line and the muck it left behind. We had to slide over the refrigerator to get into the kitchen, as it had flipped on its back. Nothing was where we had left it. The dishwasher detergent was in the bathroom, lamps were on the floor, dressers were on their back. My couches were tilted on top of my coffee table, and brown was the color scheme everywhere. We spent some time going through clothes and hanging them out to dry with the hope that with the sanitizing wash cycle of our family’s washer we would be able to salvage them. We opened all of the windows. A state trooper saw us and stopped by, and told us we should probably move on. They knew that while we may have been allowed for re-entry, we were probably pushing it. We left and prepared for the next day.
The next day we were on the official list for re-entry. Funny, since nobody stepped foot in our house to inspect – we would have seen the bootprints in the mud. A pair of men stopped by in the afternoon to look at our first floor and gave us a yellow, limited entry status. Zach and I spent the day hauling all of our big items out to the curb - couches, tables, beds, mattresses, toy boxes, lamps. My great-grandparents china cabinet that was at least 50 years old. Our matching dressers that were only 9 months old, along with our new mattress. The custom TV cabinet that Zach spent hours building out of old wood from the old roof. Most drawers in dressers and such were too engorged in water to open so they were tossed without seeing what contents were inside.
On a lighter note, there were a few notable things that were saved:
• 3 tubs of holiday decorations. I had pulled these out of the basement before we made our departure and put them on the couches. Even though they didn’t have lids, all 3 managed to float and stay upright when they landed, even though the couches got stuck on the coffee table.
• The coffee table itself. It’s made of marble with teak-wood legs. It got one scratch from the couch, but, can be fixed. Aside from a good cleaning, it lived!
• Zach’s collection of Hot Wheels from when he was a little boy. These were “stored” on top of the china cabinet which miraculously didn’t tip over. Unfortunately, X’s hot wheel collection was on the floor of his room and rusted by the time we got to them.
• X’s rocking chair built by his great-great-grandpa. When we returned to the house when there was 6 inches of water in the house, I had grabbed the chair – it had floated from X’s room into our bedroom – and put it on top of the headboard of our bed.
Over the next 6 days, with the extraordinary help of family, we were able to get everything out of the house, strip the carpet, and tear out the drywall and insulation in both the house and the garage. My stepbrother Larry fixed both of our flatbed trailers which were completely submerged and helped tremendously in storing and moving things over the summer. When we were done, there was nothing left to do but wait.
Our house had been on the very edge of the 500 year flood plain, which we were not aware of until two days before the flood. Our mortgage company had not required flood insurance and stated directly on our mortgage papers, "Not in flood plain, no flood insurance required." A call to our insurance agent confirmed that we were out of luck. We filed a claim for sewer backup (a $5,000 rider) to no avail. Even though I had video of the water coming up out of the storm sewer, the flood overrides that occurrence.
Ironically, we lost our boat in the flood as well. The plug was not in it, and it took on water (muck, actually) in the engine compartment and cuddy cabin. The boat still floated, and while tethered to the trailer, actually landed back on the trailer in the right position. Our boat insurance considered it a total loss, as a boat shop in town could not get it started and would not mess with it because of all the aftermarket parts on the engine. Boat insurance is worth every penny!
We had applied for FEMA assistance before we were allowed back in the house, and the inspector came the 2nd day we were allowed back into the house to inspect. He was an odd character, and asked questions such as how many TV's and radios we had in each room. He insisted on knowing if we had a chainsaw, asking it at least 5 different times. Finally we told him we had a sawzaw, which we pretty much used as a chainsaw. I took a peek at the form he was filling out on his computer, and basically these were all yes and no things he had to ask, as well as identifying if each room was repairable. Funny, he had every room as a no for repairable except for the bathroom - not sure why the bathroom would be fixable if everything around it is not. At any rate, the following Tuesday was a very good day. I checked our bank account and a deposit of $28, 600 had been deposited. This was the maximum amount of FEMA assistance that was given. That deposit created smiles all around and a huge sigh of relief. While the amount was nowhere near the amount it would take to fix our house, it was something to get us through the next few months, to make decisions, to try and move on. As FEMA repeated over and over, this money is to to make you whole again, it does not make everything right--they are completely right in that, it does not, but it gives you a little glimmer of hope that perhaps you will be able to move on.
The next few weeks were a blur. I was off of work. We had nothing to do at the house. The city had no idea what it was doing. We were living with my mother-in-law, who was doing her best (bless her heart) to put up with our dogs. Our animal family was scattered across the city, and we had nothing to do but plan and scheme on how to get out of this. We had a $65,000 mortgage on a house that was now worth very little. We'd spent the last 10 years remodeling the house and had finally gotten to a point where the major projects were done and we were really enjoying our house, and looking forward to a serene, relaxing summer. Since that was literally ripped out from under us (or, went down the toilet as it may be), we were pretty realistic about our future with the house. $28,600 would not come close to fixing it to the finish level that we were accustomed, even with Zach doing all of the work. Besides, neither of us had the heart to do it all over again.l
We had planned to move out of state before X made a move to middle school. We began exploring the possibility of moving now, or soon. Basically it would be cutting our losses, and I believed would be a better emotional environment that living in Cedar Rapids for the next 5 years. It is going to take a lot of time for the city to recover, and frankly with how the city was approaching helping homeowners, it was not something we were interested in hearing about every night on the news. We made the decision to move our departure up, and went RV shopping to facilitate a place to live while we decided where to move and to literally live in while we built a new house. Once we made this decision, we selected and purchased a new 5th wheel RV within a week.
We moved the RV onto our property the next week, and worked on getting electric run to the property via a temporary electric pole. That was a chore itself, and took 3 calls to the city who said they'd call the electric company to approve the turn-on and finally an in-person visit for Zach to stand there while the call was made to finally get Alliant to come and turn the electric on. Once that was done we had an air conditioned home base, and we began using up some of the gift cards that had been sent to furnish the rest of the RV. The nice thing about the RV is that it comes furnished. Our first purchase was a real mattress identical to the one we used to have in our bed, followed by kitchen stuff galore. While we didn't have to buy couches or TVs, we had to buy everything else; sheets, towels, dishes and everything else a kitchen entails.
Zach and I took a scouting trip to Greenville, SC during one of my client visits to that area. While there we found that Greenville was not for us, but as we wandered to Charlotte, NC, and Asheville, NC (and everywhere in between,) we kept going back to the Asheville area. Something about that area speaks to us, and we made our final decision that we wanted to head that way to make our home. We may end up somewhere between Asheville and Charlotte so I can utilize either airport, but our plans now have us heading there before the end of the year as the weather gets colder in Iowa.
During the summer we kept close contact with our mortgage company--from an initial visit with them the week after the flood to many phone calls later. We approached it that we were in this together...now that the house was worth so much less than it had, they owned more of the house than we did (in fact, really they owned all of it. Finally my husband had a meeting with them and told them we needed a reduced payoff amount that someone would actually pay for our house. We had had several people call us interested in the house, but we had no amount we could give them other than $65,000--a number nobody would be willing to pay. Our representative at the bank told us he would take it to the higher-ups and get back to us.
Two weeks later we had a couple stop and we took them on a tour of the house and garage. We were extremely honest with them, telling them what our mortgage was, what we thought the house was worth and that in the end it all depended on what the bank would take for it. At the time, a house just down the block had sold for $20,000--basically the cost of the lot. They were looking for a flooded house to buy, fix up, and ultimately live in. The stopped the next day with a friend of theirs that was a contractor, who apparently approved of the house and told them that our house would take a lot less than others in the area, and they made an offer on the house of $40,000.
Zach went to the bank the next morning and told them we had an offer on the house, and what the offer was. They told us that the bank president had agreed to lower the mortgage to $50,000--shocking, to say the least. We told them that we could throw in some things to see if the buyers would go up--our Jeep, a snowblower, a microwave, the fence panels--but we had no cash we could put into this to make this even. They went back to the bank president and got it down to $48,000, final offer. The buyers were still interested, and made a verbal agreement to purchase the house.
We had set a date of Nov 8th to begin our move east. The buyers were interested in moving the purchase quickly, and we began planning for where we would move in the interim. There was one mobile home park in town that was allowing 5th wheels, but the price was 2 times the regular lot rent, essentially price gouging flood victims. Most of the campgrounds here close in October and do not offer sewer service. Zach was really not interested in having to pack up and move the RV every three days to dump all the water and such, and with us cooking in the RV as well as the bathing, that really was not an option. We approached our neighbor about allowing us to park in his driveway and use his sewer line, and talked to the buyers about utilizing the electric until we left. Everyone agreed and we had a plan in place for where to live in September and October.
Where we sit now
Currently, the plan is still in place to leave for Asheville on November 8th. I've cleared this with my work to have the week where I can work from the road.
The purchase still appears to be happening, but with some snags. They provided a purchase agreement, which our lawyer is looking at. While it sounded at first that their dad was financing this and liquidating some assets, things apparently have changed and it looks like their dad is putting down his own house as collateral against a loan. They tried getting a loan and banks are not giving out loans to fix up flooded house without collateral right now (probably a smart idea.) So hopefully we will know more next week. Even if this sale doesn't go through, I have no doubt that the house will sell at a price of $48,000. Basically they are buying the land for $20,000, and paying another $28,000 for an awesome garage that had no lasting damage from the flood. The house is free and they can do whatever they want with it. If we were doing it we would have it bulldozed and start over, but that's just us.
We are in the process of moving our few belongings to my mom's garage for the winter. We'll be back for them in the spring.
We are still in shock that this has happened, but know that we have to control where we go from now. We were not prepared to move yet; however, it is the best thing we can do for our family right now. It will not be an easy or quick road; that route would have had us purchasing a house already. But, it is the best choice for us to continue toward our dream and our dream house. I would not wish this on anybody, and any insurance I now purchase will not be at an insurance agent's suggestion...I have bunches of questions that are now important to me from this experience. I heard a figure of 95% of homeowners affected by this flood did not have flood insurance. We are not the only ones struggling with how to rebuild our lives.
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