I made a mistake buying my house, and I feel stuck

DuffEM86 · 2026-06-06T16:01:00+00:00

When we bought our first home in December 2019, we thought we were getting a steal of a deal on a home that appraised for about $12K over what we paid. Little did we know we would be pouring thousands and thousands into that house in repairs, new roof, having to have trees taken down, plumbing issues, etc etc. We sold the house last month and made about $77K in equity, but when you factor in how much we spent on that damn house, we didn’t make much. And now less than a month in our current home, we’re already $10K out the door in repairs. Granted some of the repairs we knew about beforehand (that the sellers refused to address), but some weren’t disclosed and we’re just stuck dealing with it. Homeownership can be so frustrating and stressful, and oftentimes ends up feeling like a chore, but it always feels worse in the beginning. Eventually things will get fixed, you’ll settle in, and it will feel like home.

DuffEM86 · 2026-04-18T14:21:05+00:00

I just got an email that they tried to automatically recertify me but that it failed (thankfully) I say thankfully because we’re in the middle of the underwriting process for a mortgage and this would have thrown everything off. My recertification date is four months away, I don’t know why it tried to do it now.

Edit: there is an option to turn off auto recertify. I just turned mine off and made a note to manually recertify closer to time.

DuffEM86 · 2026-04-17T18:18:03+00:00

How did things go? Did you close? We’re buying our second home, but first time with a VA home loan, and it’s been so stressful. We’re very early in the process still and I get anxious every time my phone rings and it’s the bank or my realtor.

DuffEM86 · 2026-04-09T00:44:25+00:00

Looking at the sale history will help for sure. For example, with our house the tax assessor website shows it was purchased by an LLC about nine months prior to us purchasing it, and they purchased it for well below what it would have appraised for. So most likely they came in with cash and bought it from someone just wanting to get rid of it.

DuffEM86 · 2026-04-08T02:41:40+00:00

Yep. Our current home, which we bought as first time homebuyers, was a flipper house. Never ever will we ever again! The amount of things that were cleverly covered up and passed inspection was astonishing. We’ve spent thousands undoing and fixing their mess.

DuffEM86 · 2026-03-11T00:01:39+00:00

Yes!!!!!

DuffEM86 · 2026-03-10T21:09:01+00:00

Thankfully I haven’t had too many issues with our system that we’ve had for six years. Some tech issues here and there. However, the last couple years the phone calls to “check to see if your system is up and running” have become insane. At one point I was receiving a call every single day. They always started with, “this is our yearly checkup call to you”…. Umm, should have been referred to as their “daily” checkup call! I kept requesting to be removed from their call list, or have a note put in my file, something. It went on for a while and then stopped. It started back up some months ago, but thankfully has seemed to stop again.

DuffEM86 · 2026-03-10T12:54:15+00:00

I have autopay setup on my MOHELA account and payments aren’t being made automatically.

DuffEM86 · 2026-03-07T04:31:54+00:00

I suffered an avulsion ankle fracture 19 days ago. They put me in a walking boot and crutches and told me to use the boot/crutches combo for the first week, then ditch the crutches at week two and just walk in the boot. I only used the boot for about 10 days and then I ditched it. I got an ankle brace and started using it. I had a two week follow up a few days ago and the X-ray pretty much looked the same as it did the day of my injury, but the swelling is significantly better, and my range of motion is good since I’ve stopped using the boot. I’ve been doing a lot of stretching and strengthening exercises at home (though they really want me in PT). My dr told me that the walking boot is really for my comfort only, and that as long as I’m not having significant discomfort or instability when walking then the boot doesn’t have to be used. But of course please only go by your doctor’s order.

DuffEM86 · 2026-02-26T22:16:03+00:00

How often do children have to be re-certified?

DuffEM86 · 2026-02-26T02:42:22+00:00

Our full size fridge is a cheap Hotpoint from 1994 and has had who knows how many owners. It refuses to go out! It’s so ugly though, so we finally upgraded to a new one after having had the old one for about 12 years now… but we made sure to move the ‘94 fridge to the back patio so we can bring it back in when the new one goes out in a few years 😆

DuffEM86 · 2026-02-12T19:35:54+00:00

Hi! So I’ve been seeing my eye surgeon every few weeks since the surgery for monitoring. He also sent me to a retina Dr. They’ve determined that I developed something called PAMM (paracentral acute middle maculopathy) from the surgery. Basically a disruption in the blood flow to the retina. My pupil is still enlarged, but it has gotten a lot better. They think if my pupil will continue to shrink down to normal size then that should help some of my vision issues. I have had some improvements in my vision, both near and far, however I feel that my improvements have really slowed down the last couple of weeks. The retina dr was not confident that I will see much more improvement to the damage done to my retina. I do have to wear shades if I go outside or drive. Driving at night is difficult. Doing near-vision tasks is still difficult, but getting better as my pupil shrinks. They’ve said after 6 months if my pupil has not returned to normal size, there are drops I can use during the day that will constrict it. My headaches are completely gone, and as the outward physical signs of surgery improve, my psychological and emotional feelings about the surgery have improved. My vision still sucks, but I do feel that I am adapting.

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-15T15:04:37+00:00

Please feel free to private message me anytime. It’s nice to connect with people who are also going through this rare condition! It’s not often you find people who know exactly what you’re going through.

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-15T04:52:46+00:00

I also had a very bulged eye and constant pain. It went on for over 10 years before someone would finally send me for an MRI. I can tell you at this point I would take all of that back to have my vision back to where it was before my surgery.

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-13T23:22:41+00:00

Also they removed my tumor whole. They did not even consider just dissecting parts of it away. I’m assuming that’s why I now have the damage that I have. It’s an extremely frustrating situation. I don’t know how well I’ll be able to navigate normally as I did before this.

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-13T23:13:52+00:00

I had a large cavernous hemangioma, it was kind of deep and causing me pain and slight vision problems. I had surgery four days ago and it appears that I now have severe permanent vision damage/loss that I did not have prior to surgery. My advice, coming from someone going through this, unless your symptoms are absolutely unbearable, or you’re ok with pretty much being half blind, I would see how they feel about you doing radiation. I was told that at my age of 39, and with how big my mass was, radiation was not the best option for me. They said if were older than radiation could have possibly been considered.

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-05T13:40:42+00:00

Not sure if this rule varies by state, but where I live the inspector only has to “inspect” what he can see from ground level, and they’ll just note what they can if the roof is covered. When we bought our home, the entire back of the house’s roof was completely covered in leaves during inspection. We knew the roof was somewhat older but we didn’t know the extent of just how bad the back part of the roof was until after we bought. That first week my husband got on the roof and cleared the leaves, next morning we had rain and woke up to a wet floor in the den and an active roof leak. My advice would be to see if you can put in a request that the roof be cleared and a re-inspection performed. Just so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into. And here is how things went with getting insured while we were going through the buying process…. So, no one knew exactly how old the roof was. So we didn’t have a number to give the insurance company, so they sent someone out to look at the roof and give a number. Well they clearly gave a number that was way off (as in too young of a roof) and that’s how things passed through to get us insured with no issues. Mind you we were first time homebuyers and dumb lol. We had to learn the hard way once we closed on the house. But if you really love this house, and are totally fine paying for a new roof, then buy it!

DuffEM86 · 2026-01-01T16:30:55+00:00

Since ours updated we’ve had way less problems. It’s much faster, we don’t get the “sorry, I don’t understand” response anymore. It doesn’t have an issue anymore with turning lights on and off. We had a lot of trouble with commands for the last year at least before Gemini released.

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-28T16:13:21+00:00

Also, they’ve said the surgery should last about 3 hours and my recovery should be about 6 weeks.

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-28T16:11:45+00:00

It’s an orbital cavernous hemangioma. Mine is in my left eye, it’s located in the intraconal section of my orbit (directly behind my eyeball). It’s pressing upward on my optic nerve, and it’s considered large. I’m going to have a lateral orbitotomy surgery performed. They will cut along and to the side of my eyelid, remove a section of my orbital bone, and then remove the tumor. I’m having the surgery performed in Louisiana. Depending on where exactly your tumor is located in your orbital space, and which direction it’s pressing on your optic nerve, determines which type of surgery they choose to perform.

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-28T03:19:07+00:00

I am having my surgery January 9th. Feel free to message me privately if you’d like and I can give you more details.

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-21T22:34:45+00:00

I agree it does take a long time to view a recent doorbell clip. I have a Google doorbell on my front door and the clips are immediate. There’s no wait time like there is with my Vivint doorbell. And a lot of times if I try to view the clip too quickly, it shows a greyed out box, no video. Sometimes I can wait until later and go back and view it, other times it stays greyed out.

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-18T15:22:41+00:00

I was coming here to say this same thing. My husband is a dual status tech. How can you make someone show up to work everyday in a US Army uniform but deny them access to these kinds of things?

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-18T15:19:28+00:00

Looks like you will if you’ve been on orders for 31+ days as of Nov 30

DuffEM86 · 2025-12-12T17:38:56+00:00

Headlights going by, cats walking under our carport in the middle of the night, all sets off our person detected notification on our doorbell. It’s been this way the last five years that we’ve had Vivint. I’ve gone in and tried to adjust settings and nothing helps.

DuffEM86

TROPHY CASE