It's all ours!

There was  a bit of drama and delays but the house is ours! We closed on Wednesday.

Creature report, creature report

I watch too much Octonauts! That song is stuck in my head.

It should have said inspection report. We had our house inspection done this week. Turns out that one of the bedrooms isn't technically a bedroom. Uh oh. Since it was priced as a three bedroom house, the appraisal should be interesting. Our bank guy isn't happy.

I don't really know what we do next.

Sludge house

We've got an agreement!

We started with a low ball offer. They countered with a number just below asking price and the requirement that they are allowed to take plants in the fall. We countered back with a more reasonable offer and agreed to the plant thing plus they had to through in the washer and dryer. They countered again in the middle and we ACCEPTED it.

That's right folks, we're moving. Let's just hope that the rest of this process goes smoothly. We still have the inspection and bank assessment to get through. But for now, let's focus on picking out paint colors and a new couch!

I suppose I can quit calling it the sludge house. It makes it sound like I don't like the house. Which isn't the case at all. I really like it! But lake gets kind of gross. Lots of lily pads and algae. Which is great for nature and stuff but not so great for people to swim in. We'll just call it the new clubhouse since that is what the kids are calling it.

More money

More money is always helpful. Especially when buying a house.

With the additional money we are now able to borrow, we found 4 more houses that we wanted to see that were previously out of our range.

Called up Realtor and told him to set stuff up. One of the owners refused to set up a showing. Umm, yeah. You don't want to show the house that you are trying to sell? Ok. Sure. Makes sense. Now I'm so curious that I want to buy it sight unseen! Or not. Morons. Why do we only like the houses owned by idiots?

Right, so three houses to look at.

The Big House: It's big. The yard is huge. Great lake frontage. Weird loft master bedroom. Bedrooms are not all on the same floor. We'd need to get a good deal on it because it's over budget.

The Lakeview house: Very charming. Great outdoor space. Beautiful views. Nicest location. Bedrooms are not all on the same floor. Master bedroom has the best views but I'd rather have the living room has great views. Taxes are really high. Can't really use the lake frontage- very steep. Needs updates.

The Sludge house: Open concept. Everything has been updated (except the fridge). House is pretty much what we wanted. Great lake views on a more private part of the lake. Huge yard. Close to town. Bedrooms are not all on the same floor. There will be a algae issue in the summer because it's on a bay. The neighbors are really just a couple of campers. They might build something in the future but for now it's campers.

We're making an offer on the Sludge house.

Sorry

Sorry to keep you hanging. I've been busy. Not buys packing though. Oops did that give the ending away?

So we were waiting for a response to our offer. Friday came and went with no response. Their realtor couldn't even get in touch with them. WTF?

On Monday we call our realtor and ask what the heck is going on? Did they die from the shock of someone making an offer on their magenta carpeted house?

Nope, they aren't sure they want to sell their house that's been on the market for THREE YEARS. They were hoping to get asking price.

These people are BSC. They have watched too much tv. They think that they've priced their house so low that people are going to get into some kind of bidding war over it.

So we didn't get the house. Oh well. Happens for a reason, blah blah blah.

I guess one of the reasons is because Itchy was able to talk the bank into approving us for more money.

Where were we?

Ah yes, we saw them at the restaurant. We were once again hopeful that the house would be done and ready to go. Not so much.

We talked to our realtor, who then talked to their realtor, and they said it would be done June 3rd. So we waited some more.

On June 4th, we went to take a look. We left feeling angry and disappointed. Their updates suck. They forgot all about keeping it neutral and went with orange paint, magenta carpet, and dusty rose countertops (not all in the same room though). Even I can tell that they work has done quickly and half assed. Except you know, it work seven weeks.

We still decided to make an offer. What can I say, we're dumb. We like the location though and the house still has the potential to be great. We got our offer together quickly and gave it to them on Wednesday. They have until the end of the day today to reply.

To be continued...

May 25th

An odd series of events occured today.

We had taken the kids to the park. Talked about just forgetting House 5 and scheduling showings for a couple of other houses in the area. It was getting late so we went out to eat.

At the restaurant, I  overhear the couple sitting next to us. It's an older couple. The old lady is sad that they finally did all these updates to their house and they won't even get to enjoy it. My brain went crazy thinking, holy crap, wouldn't it be something if these are the owners of House 5!

I went to the gym later that night and on my way home I drove past House 5. There is a car in the driveway and lights are on in the house.

We know that the owners live in MN and are old. The plates on the white Escalade were from MN.

I totally think that the owners were in town for Memorial Day weekend and they were the ones sitting next to us at dinner.

In the mean time...

We had three weeks to kill. We didn't want to appear too eager for house 5 so we told our realtor not to ask about it. The listing agent knew that when he heard something, he should come to us. Our realtor was suppose to find us more to look at. And we'd just wait.

According to their 3 week timeline we should have heard something by May 13th. While we waited we went to look at two other houses. One was pretty bad (tiny rooms, not open at all, awkward layout, but the outside was awesome) but the other one was a contender. Mostly because the yard was amazing. The house itself was only ok to me. It did meet most of our wants but it just didn't thrill me.

Probably because we knew that until we knew what was happening to House 5, we wouldn't be able to move forward.

May 13th came and went. So did May 20th. Realtor heard that things were nearly done but the house still wasn't officially listed for sale.

On May 25th Itchy and I decided that we were going to have Realtor find out what was happening. We were feeling like the owners just didn't want to sell. We were ready to move on. We needed to know what was happening. If it wasn't ready by June 1st, we were moving on.

House 5

Itchy and I both felt like house 5 was "our" house. We had both seen the listing online for the two years we spent looking at houses. Itchy liked it on paper more then I did but once I saw it in person, I totally felt like it was ours.

It's not perfect but I think we could make it really great. Now it had a pipe burst in December that caused some damage in the kitchen and bathroom. But the insurance company was paying for the repairs and they had already been started. We had questions about what they were doing (would they put in double sinks?, what color tile are they using?, if they accepted our offer would they let us pick out stuff?, etc). Our realtor said he'd talk to the listing agent.

Saturday night we practically picked out paint colors. We were both excited and it felt like it was really going to happen.

Fast forward to Monday. The owners decided to pull the house off the market until all of the repairs were done. They wouldn't even look at any offer that we might want to make. The contractor said it would take three weeks.

I was irrationally angry. I hated the owners for this. They had been trying to sell the place for at least 2 years and they finally have someone ready to make an offer and they pull it off the market? WTF! I had a feeling that they wanted to finish the repairs and then jack up the price. Which would make it over our budget. It was so depressing.

Let's get started

On April 20th we looked at the first batch of houses. 6 of them. The 7th was on a crappy part of the lake so we didn't even bother.

I'm not going to describe these houses in detail because it would just take too long but we named them ala House Hunters.

House 1: Rope railings, close to hospital
House 2: Neighbor to rope railings, gas station bathroom, moldy basement
House 3: Huge yard, awkward layout upstairs and downstairs, steep elevation, ugly.
House 4: Across the street from the murder warehouse, nice yard, closet for a bedroom
House 5: Our house
House 6: The dam sink house

The first three were terrible. Nothing that we could even reno to make it better. They just weren't going to work.

House 4 could work if we could have gutted the basement and then turned it into 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Turned the master bedroom upstairs into a playroom, the 2nd "bedroom" upstairs into an office, and then reno'd the kitchen. Sounds like a lot of work because it would have been. Plus it has this weird warehouse across the street where I think they could hide bodies.

House 5. Ahh, 5. Walked in and loved it. Loved the location. It needs some updating. There are a few projects that we'd want to do over time, but we both really like this house. A pipe froze in the kitchen over the winter but the owners were taking care of that as well as redoing a bathroom. We wanted to know more about the not quite completed projects.

House 6. Sinks galore. Kitchen was a total gut job. I hated the location, Itchy liked it. Didn't matter since we both wanted 5.

We're hunting houses

Shhh, be verwy, verwy quiet we're hunting houses. Don't want to scare them off.

Like I said before, we're finally looking for a house. I feel like this needs to be documented so I am making an effort to blog about it.

We moved here in 2010. We stupidly thought we'd stay in our rental for 6 months and then buy a house. We are dumb. It doesn't work like that. Neither one of us had had a job since 2006. No bank (except those in Nigeria) would even talk to us (again the Nigerians were willing to deal if we gave them our SSN, full names, bank account numbers). So we waited. And waited. We looked at houses online at least once a week. Mocked the ugly ones, picked out paint colors for the ones we liked. For TWO AND A HALF YEARS. Which brings us to April 2013.

We got our 2012 taxes done as soon as we could. Delays happened because of the accountant, but whatever. Once we had that in hand we talked to the bank. They pre-approved us for much less than we were expecting. Insert sad face. We look at the hospital like it's a huge asset. They see it as a huge liability.

Well, we took our disappointment to the best realtor's office in town. Ok, the only one in town. We told him what we wanted and he started working on a list. It's a short list. We have a long list of demands.

1. Location. It has to be on the lake. With a low to mid elevation. On a good part of the lake. This narrowed our search substantially.

Our demand for at least 3 bedrooms (preferably on the same level) and 2 bathrooms (or potential to add a bathroom) made things even more difficult.

Our realtor found us 7 homes to look at.

House hunters

Oh the lies they tell on that show! I hate them so much. They gave me the idea that finding our first house would be fun and exciting. It hasn't been.

Yeah

So a toddler walks into his sisters room.. Wait have you heard this one? LOL. I know, right?!?

Having a three year old and a 18 month old is an adventure. Obviously I suck at blogging about parenting. It just isn't happening. Every once and a while I'm all like, I should totally blog about this! But then I don't, because every time I touch the computer, Little Dude finds another death defying activity.

The last thing I thought that about was Stowa's latest plan for when she's a grownup. She wants to be a cat. A white cat with green polka dots, a purple collar, a pink nose, and blue eyes. And she totally knows that she can't just grow into a cat. She's not dumb. That's why I have to get a magic wand and turn her into this cat. She's got it all figured out!

Little Dude is busy. Always. Not talking though. He has no interest in sharing his thoughts with us.

Tumbleweeds

Good grief. There are tumble weeds all over the place in here.