My husband and I have good jobs now, and can afford our mortgage (barely), but we live 1.5 hours (one way) from where we each work... we desperately want to move closer to the city where we both work, have all of our friends and family, but can not sell our house for what we owe. We keep putting money into the house to make it better and better... but now we have racked up a ton of CC debt and we both have car payments,, childcare, school-loans and on top of all of the other daily expenses, we have tollway expenses totaling over $400 per month! We are also very lonely out in the country and there are no jobs out here. We are making all of our expenses... but just barely. We are paying the minimums on everything... but we hardly ever get time to see each other. We both drive 3 hours a day just to and from work... My car is not even 3 years old and it has over 98,000 miles on it (also making me upside-down on my car loan). We have to leave for work by 6am in the morning and don't get home until 7:30pm... we both make a decent living, but are both exhausted by the time we get home that we hardly have any time with each other or with our kids. Being stuck out in the boonies... we are miserable and can't do this any longer... we have been doing this for 5 years... and can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are paying all of our money and working so very hard for a miserable life. We are stuck! What can we do?

Have you appraoched the mortgage holder regarding a short sale?

No. I heard that you can not do a short-sale unless you are in default. We are not and nothing has changed to make us worse off. We just can not live out this far for another 5 years hoping the value of our home with increase enough to sell it. Nobody wants to rent out here either.

Not so, it's a way to avoid default and foreclosure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_sale_(real_estate)

I will definitely look into that, thank you. I was also thinking about putting it on the market for Lease/Purchase... does anybody know anything about that? I saw it here...
http://www.bowerpowerblog.com/2011/03/lease-purchase-money-and-emotional-rollercoaster-kinda-story/

Lease purchase in your situation would be dicey. You would be dealing with a buyer who can't put down enough to buy outright so you could get stiffed easily.

First and I will be rude, the home was in the boonies when you bought it, that has not changed, you wanted to live way out for some reason to start with.

Next why are you spending money to fix up a house at this point, esp if you are not sure about selling it.

First I would get a budget worked out to start controlling the bills.
Next sadly many people leave at 6 and get home at 8, not the best but it has to happen for a while for many people.

The trouble with lease purchase is that what happens, 9 months from now, if they move out, leaving holes in the walls after not paying rent for 3 months and the dog they were not suppose to have chewed holes in the carpet?

So you have to pay that payment and the cost of a new place both.

2 reasons that we moved out to the boonies in the first place. 1) the house was super inexpensive on land. We went from 1,300 sq ft older home close to the city and paid almost $200,000 to a 2,400 sq ft new home with a 2 car garage (old house had no garage and cars got broken into a lot)... The new house was $135,000. 2) We were starting a family and it's sad to see the world being paved over and the school district at the new house is top quality... And we both worked online at the time (both eventually get laid off from those jobs). We love the area we live for raising kids... And that is why we have stayed... There are many children in our area... Lots of places to run and be a kid and ride bikes... And top rated schools. But not nothing has changed... We both have jobs in the city now. Great jobs. We are on a budget... not even near behind on any bills and never have been even a little. We can more than pay for everything in our lives and take a nice vacation at least once a year. There lies the problem... We are not behind and struggling financially at all. It's the time spent on the commute and the fact that we would lose about $40,000 if we sold our house today... So we are stuck commuting... For another 5 years? Until we can eventually sell? I am just trying to find all of our options. And we put money into it over time... early on, we thought that we would stay forever... Things like hardwoods instead of carpet and tile in the bathroom instead of vinyl on the floor... Etc. It just gets hard to work so hard... Hardly have time for each other... And paying good money for something that is not the way we want to live. I know, these are high-class problems and we are lucky to even have a home. I am hoping that you or somebody could give us suggestions and different options. I am going to ask a lender what a short-sale is all about... and how it will effect our credit score... We both have over 700 presently and I don't want to ruin that. I am not sure about lease purchases either. Is it more risky to just lease out your house or list it for lease-purchase?

The risk of either leasing or contract for sale is that the buyer defaults or the renter moves out leaving you with a vacancy and possibly damages.

If your lender won't do a short sale, maybe you can afford to pay the difference. Example, the mortgage balance is $100K you find a buyer for $90K. You still owe $10K so you take a loan out to pay off the $10K. If you are going to save $400/month in commuting costs you may be able to do that.

Of course there is another issue of where you are going to get the money to put down on another house.

That you for that great and very helpful advise! I am going to ask them about the Short-Sale. I went to their site... WellsFargo.com by the way and saw something called 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure' that looks interesting... that is the thing though... we are no where near foreclosure... but we can not sell our house for what we got it for. We actually owe $145 for it because we used $10,000 of our equity for a loan to improve the house. The house EXACTLY like ours, further down the street, and is way better than our house for so many reasons has been on the market for a year with no nibbles and is selling for $125,000... OUCH!