That's a brilliant idea, Stanley!

After being back in Los Angeles for a couple weeks and reviewing how powerless we are with the housing market, and our perceived desirability of our house, another idea has arisen from the ashes. We could refinance our house and get an equity loan, rent our house and start the required work needed on the French farmhouse. Cindy could stay in L.A. temporarily for a month, and complete her obligation at her work. This would allow Caleigh and I to go to France with the two dogs, allow Caleigh to get into her school, and I could get the house running. This mainly consists of updating the Kitchen and bath, adding a bath upstairs, and getting the house into the 21st century, phone, satellite, and wifi. The broader idea is that we could tap into our equity and keep the house in our name, then re list it in a couple years, when the market would be hopefully more desirable. There are so many variables in the entire plan that we have tried to adapt without placing ourselves squarely in the field of fire for the financially inept planners. Not unlike tap dancing in the middle of a chapter 13 minefield. It reminds me of that hysterical scene in the old “Black Adder” British TV show, when Black Adder (Rowan Atkinson) has been ordered to lead a charge against the numerically superior German line in World War I . “I would rather stand on top of a 10 foot step ladder in no man’s land at midnight, and have a lantern strapped to my head, while I lit a dozen cigarettes, and sang God Save the Queen.”
Our thinking is that while we are working on the modernization of the French farmhouse, we would be adding substantial equity to it, while our house in Topanga rides out the drastic decline that has been the housing market. If we rented our house in L.A., it would generate the mortgage, and property taxes, basically placing it in financial hibernation. Well that’s our two year plan, don’t try this at home. The main reason I’m writing this is to illustrate the many tangents that are followed in order to follow ones dream, as we chronicle this process I wanted to include the highs and lows and a good look at what transpires and changes in all facets of our journey. There are so many different things that we have to consider on a daily basis that the casual onlooker might not realize that these are decisions we have to make. Some decisions are easy and some hard, and the possibility that one decision could financially ruin us. But Cindy and I agree with that old line I keep throwing out, “There are no luggage racks, on a hearse.”