Are we really buying this house?

So here I sit on the eve of what is suppose to be the closing appointment for the house we are buying. On Tuesday, we did a last walk thru to make sure they fixed the items they agreed to fix. Now mind you, I had doubts when we were at the house a few weeks ago that they would have everything done. When we were there, it was obvious that someone was doing something to the electrical outlets, but I thought by then, it should have all been taken care of. So on Tuesday when we did our walk thru and my brilliant husband showed up with the electrical outlet tester, we quickly realized there was not electricity on the second floor. At one point there was some electricity, but some outlets needed to be fixed, which the seller agreed to fix. We were very perplexed as to why we went from a few outlets not working to the whole upstairs not working. Additionally there was no pressure to the water in any facuet. We couldn't find the shut off valve so we had no idea if the water was on or off, so we left last night thinking, wow, it is 1 1/2 days before we are suppose to close and there are major issues that need to be addressed. To complicate the matters worse, tomorrow is day 44 of a 45 day interest rate lock. So if we don't close by Friday, we will lose our interest rate which is lower than what the market is now. So our realtor assured us that everything would be fine and that she would make sure that these items were fixed and that we would close as planned. I left having faith in our realtor, but at the same time wondering how in the world such big issues could be fixed in one day. So I waited patiently all morning and into the early afternoon to hear back from her. She called and said that it was an easy fix, that the electric was disconnected to do some installation and never reconnected and the water had been turned on and we were good to go. She and Bill met there again this afternoon for a final look thru. I had a meeting at work that I had to be at so I missed the final walk thru. When I finally met up with Bill this afternoon, he told me that we would not be closing tomorrow not because of those issues we found yesterday but because the mortage company wasn't ready on our behalf and because they discovered today a lien against the title that needed to be cleared up. Apparently when the sellers paid off there mortgage, they didn't do it the "right" way and so the lien never got cleared. There is of course paperwork that needs to be done to clear it, but it won't happen until early next week. On our end of it, the mortgage company is so busy that they didn't get to our file until Monday and wasn't really ready for the closing. I thought it was interesting that I didn't know even this afternoon how much money we were suppose to bring to the closing. No one could give me a final number. That should have been a warning to me. So of course, my first question is what about my interest rate? Our realtor told me that we could extend for 2 days without any additional expense, and after that we could extend for 10 days for a fee of something like $160. She spoke to the mortgage guy and said, hey, this isn't the buyers fault, why should they have to pay to extend. The mortgage guy graciously agreed to pay the fee. So we will now be closing on Monday, 3/23. We could have closed next week, except we already have plans to go back to MI this next week to relist our MI house.

I honestly don't have faith that the sellers did what they were suppose to do per the agreement. We asked them to fix some electrical issues and 2 plumbing issues. It is obvious that they have not fixed the plumbing issues, so it makes me wonder if they really fixed the electrical issues. We have asked for a copy of the paid invoice for the work they were suppose to have done. If it hasn't been done, they now have a week to get it fixed. We are not going to back down and let this slide. We agreed, we did our part, and we are going to expect them to hold up their end of the bargain.

I am still hopeful that in the end it will just be a bunch of added drama and that when the dust settles, we will be happy home owners, so in the interim, I am going to focus on getting the MI house relisted and hope that someone wants to buy it.

Hey, I forgot to include the part about the husband seller almost dying a couple of weeks ago. The couple we are buying from are an older couple. They have owned the house since 1957. They are in a nursing home. My realtor told me that the mortgage guy was scrambling a couple of weeks ago because the seller wasn't "doing so well" so they got whatever signatures they needed from him in case he died before the closing. That was in an effort to avoid having to go thru probate. So now I of course have that added to my list of things to worry about.

Back on Track

The sellers have agreed to fix the items we asked them to fix! So we are back on track. The appraisal has been done and everything is back in motion. We are scheduled to close on the house in March.



We have of course started to think about all the things we want to tackle before we move int. It's our plan to be out of our apartment by May 1st so we will have about 6 weeks to work on the house and move. This is the first time ever that we have had time in advance to do stuff before the move. I am looking forward to doing the painting without the hassle of moving furniture and covering things up.



It's amazing to me with the short amount of time that we have been here how much help we have had offered to us. It is such a warm loving feeling to have people offer help unconditionally. Generally I am not a person who asks for help, but I am realizing that people who are offering, (most of the time) truly mean it. So knowing that, I will gratefully accept!

Patiently waiting

So we put in an offer on the house. We negotiated and came to an agreed upon price. We are very excited and can't wait to move in. Everything was going great until the home inspection happened on Monday. Of course it is an older home and we expected some issues with the house, but there were some significant electrical problems and a few other things that we didn't feel comfortable tackling and paying for. So we are back to negotiating with the sellers. Bill and I both feel that these items are things that we didn't know and couldn't know just walking through the house and that they are safety concerns and they are the sellers responsibility. We are hopeful that they feel the same way. Of course we have learned by being on the seller end with our house in MI that people aren't always logical when negotiating about houses. Also because of our experiences over the last 9 months with our MI house, we realize that we don't have to settle. If they aren't willing to pay for the upgrades needed, we are going to resind our offer. We know that we can expect these things and that we don't have to bend on what we feel is important. So we have made the pinky swear pact with each other that if they come back and say anything less than they will pay for the things we are asking to be fixed, we will not be buying this house. I have now stopped daydreaming about paint colors and location of furniture until I hear back from the realtor. I am hopeful that it will all work out, but cautious enough to simmer my excitement and patiently waiting..........

To buy or not to buy.....

Since we have moved to Iowa, Bill and I have had lots of debates about how to handle the housing situation. We realize that we will probably have a "beach house" in Michigan for a long time. Although we are planning to relist the house this spring in hopes that someone in MI will still be employed and will be looking for a 5 bedroom house in our area and will not see any value in purchasing a foreclosed property, we are still realistic. Of course most of our debating has been should we continue to rent or should we look for a house. We are not good renters. We don't like sharing walls with the neighbors, we don't like to see eviction notices hanging on doors next to us, we don't like that the carpet is fraying, and the list goes on and on.

So as part of our list of cheap things to do, we have frequented more than I can count, open houses. I have spent countless hours on the internet looking for houses. I have daydreamed about owning a house here. We decided we could afford to own 2 houses. It wouldn't be the one big nice new house that we would like to own, but instead, we could afford an older less expensive house. Hoping that maybe we would find a house we liked that just needed some fresh paint we decided to look at some houses tonight. We found a house we liked. It has the space we need and in an area we like. Of course is also comes with 1984ish wallpaper and carpeting. But we have already started talking about which bedroom each kid would get, where we would put the couch and TV, etc, etc. We sent the realtor off to get more information for us and I am contacting the Mortgage company to make sure my pre-approval is still good, so stay tuned!

So it's been over a month since I last updated my blog. I have gotten several complaints from friends wondering why I haven't updated it. (I guess people are actually reading this!) Winter is upon us and that has brought cold weather and snow. The snow fall here isn't such a big deal as we are use to Michigan winters. (and we are very glad we aren't battling this Michigan winter!) But the cold temperatures are outrageous! We have had days of actual temp in the -11 (yes that is negative 11!) Add the windchill on top and we have seen -25! It has been very hard to adjust to such cold temps. The kids don't understand why they can't go out to play and why they have to be driven to school when we only live a block away. We also are finding that our 1300 sq. ft. of apartment space has become even smaller when there is no escape to the outside.

Christmas was yesterday. This Christmas season has been interesting. It was hard to decide which traditions we do just to do and which traditions we do because it has meaning. I waited for the kids to ask, when do we get to do gingerbread houses? When do we get to bake? When do we get to celebrate Jesus' birthday with cake? None of which were ever asked of me. So that lead me to ponder, what is important during the Christmas season? I also struggled with the feeling that we weren't in a place that is home. We are living in this townhouse on a temporary basis. I don't know how long temporary is, but in my mind, this is a stepping stone and I don't feel settled. I struggled with having traditions and feeling like home when I don't really feel like I am home. In the end, we did bake cookies for Santa, we did have cake yesterday to celebrate Jesus' birthday. The kids seemed to enjoy Christmas just like every other year and we were together as a family.

An update on our house. We officially took the house off the market in December. Our contract with the realtor had expired and we decided that since we weren't there to keep the driveway and sidewalk clean and since there aren't a lot of houses sold in the winter we would not renew the contract at this time. Our hope is to do some painting in the spring to make it seem new again and relist in the spring. I am not optimistic that it will sell even after relisting. The economy is so bad right now and houses are a dime a dozen, but I also know that if we don't try it will never be sold. So we will get back on the house selling band wagon this spring and hope and pray that someone will think our house is the best house for them. And if not, the contingency plan is to use it as a vacation home until the market is better in a couple of years and sell it then.

RacObama Wins ~ Part 2

This morning we told the kids that Barack Obama won the election. Evan told us "I know, I voted for him."

Enough said.

RacObama wins

As Evan and I were driving home after picking him up from preschool today, he precedes to tell me that "RacObama won in our class today" Really. I asked him who he voted for. He told me "RacObama", "but in the other class (the other PreK class) NcCain won" He then asked me, "so who really won RacObama or NcCain" I told him we would have to wait to see.........