While yesterday was my "Wallow" day, today is my day to get over it and get back up and searching and being optimistic. We just saw 4 houses tonight. I think we were both surprised on what we found.
House 1:Cul-de-Sac house - this house is in a good neighborhood, in a town we were avoiding because our car was broken into in July and it just left a bad taste in our mouth. But, the reality is, people say there are good areas in that town and it is centrally located to everything we want to be close to. So, this house made the list. It's a Rambler, 1 story with about 1800 sq ft.
Our Realtor met us at that house with her 6 year old daughter. She was fun to have tag-along with us. When we walked into the house, she said, "It's very plain". It was. everything was white and the flooring was removed. The kitchen needs to be completely remodeled. The garage was a fake garage/had been made into storage area. In a nutshell, we liked it. The house was ready for us to put our stamp on it. The price is right too. It would be a comfortable place to live. The yard was great and very private.
House 2:Split Entry 1400 Square foot house - this house wasn't ever on our list. It's in the same town as some of Mike's clients and it's best for professional reasons to stay out of the same areas. We weren't super excited about the house but our Realtor had seen it and thought it would go for a price we would be comfortable paying. So, we went to see it.
My impressions:It's a run down neighborhood. Yes, it's on a cul-de-sac but the houses around it are all run down-ish too. Then, when I compare the house with other split-entry homes that my friends have, it's like someone took the design and squished it so everything is smaller and more narrow. The stairs were narrow... the kitchen was small... the yard needed lots of work but was HUGE. It had a rain barrow and a hot tub. I don't think we want any of those things. The floors felt wonky - or uneven. It just was not a comfortable house for us. so, we walked away saying, "house #1 is the best".
House 3: This house is out of our price range. in fact, it's $20,000 more than our original budget. We'd already offered $5,000 more on the last house that we lost. But, it seemed like this house needs a lot of work. I was surprised that our Realtor let us go see it. We drove out to the point and we were blown over by the location! it is 2 miles from a state park that is right on the sound. It looks over the sound. There are houses, trees and other things in the way but you can see the tops of the ships that are going through the sound. I seriously, could love seeing that every day. I really am drawn to water and I think a view like that would feed my soul each day.
We walk inside and it has a small living room with weird spray foam stuff along the edging/molding on the floor. So, obviously it has some insulation issues. The kitchen is original to it's 1954 original build date. But after that, it has a large garage/laundry room. It has a large family room with a wood fireplace. It's technically listed as 1600 square feet but also has 900 of unfinished square footage. I'm not sure if that counts the garage or maybe the upstairs that used to be the attic? It's unclear to me what it is.
We liked the house. It needs a lot of sweat equity but it is odd that the house is even as low as it is. So what do we do? We were thinking we offer about $8000 less than the asking price but I truly am scared that with the weekend, we will face a multiple offers situation and lose out. So what do we do??? How do we go over budget? What does that mean financially? This house will stretch us beyond what we wanted to do.
Well, there is one more house to look at... let's see what that house is like...
House 4:The Rental house. This house is a 1 story with basement. The bank that bought it back invested some money into it. There is brand new carpet and paint on the walls. It's a safe house. The upper level is 2 bedrooms 1 bath and nice. Comfortable. To get to the basement, you have to walk outside. You also have to be under 6 foot tall!That floor is for short people!It's an odd layout but it had all new carpeting down there too. The bathroom was old and you had to walk through it to get to a room that had an old stove and nothing else in it. As we talked, we realized that this house would be a perfect rental. It's in our budget - below our budget. We could rent out the basement and cut our payments into half... it would be great for us in the near future.
So now we are torn. Do we choose house 1, 3 or 4?
1 - safe house but won't appreciate too quickly.
2 - that house isn't even an option for us
3 - loved this house. Could we afford the higher cost?The reality is, the house should be selling for $50,000 more than it is listed for. That's encouraging because it means we could fix the house and just flip it if we wanted to.
4 - the conservative direction to go.
Well, we're not conservative people I guess. The reality is, I looked at house #4 and realized it would be like apartment living for us. It's only adding one bedroom to what we have at Mike's condo +a garage. The garage would end up being our storage room and we'd be living a "temporary" life. We've done that for the first 10 months of our marriage. I don't want to do that for the next 2-3 years of our marriage. I need more roots than that.
So, house #4. Now is the question of what to offer.
We yo-yo'd around but after talking to our friend and mortgage expert, we found out about a new program. It allows investors who put down cash for a house, to rehab a house and then secure a conventional 30 year fixed loan within 6 months of buying the house. This would be great because the cash offer we have is through a hard-money loan and the interest rate for us would fluctuate.
That allowed us to think that maybe we should just go in with the best offer possible - asking price.
So, I've emailed our Realtor and told her we're offering asking price + $8.00.
We can only hope and pray after that that we put in the best offer and get this house. This really is the highest we can go and we're making an investment in our future by buying this house. At the same time, I think we will love the house so much that we might never sell it. We'd have to live there everyday and be able to sit out on the deck and watch the sunset over the Puget sound. Yes, that sounds miserable to me...
Which house would you choose?
House 1:Cul-de-Sac house - this house is in a good neighborhood, in a town we were avoiding because our car was broken into in July and it just left a bad taste in our mouth. But, the reality is, people say there are good areas in that town and it is centrally located to everything we want to be close to. So, this house made the list. It's a Rambler, 1 story with about 1800 sq ft.
Our Realtor met us at that house with her 6 year old daughter. She was fun to have tag-along with us. When we walked into the house, she said, "It's very plain". It was. everything was white and the flooring was removed. The kitchen needs to be completely remodeled. The garage was a fake garage/had been made into storage area. In a nutshell, we liked it. The house was ready for us to put our stamp on it. The price is right too. It would be a comfortable place to live. The yard was great and very private.
House 2:Split Entry 1400 Square foot house - this house wasn't ever on our list. It's in the same town as some of Mike's clients and it's best for professional reasons to stay out of the same areas. We weren't super excited about the house but our Realtor had seen it and thought it would go for a price we would be comfortable paying. So, we went to see it.
My impressions:It's a run down neighborhood. Yes, it's on a cul-de-sac but the houses around it are all run down-ish too. Then, when I compare the house with other split-entry homes that my friends have, it's like someone took the design and squished it so everything is smaller and more narrow. The stairs were narrow... the kitchen was small... the yard needed lots of work but was HUGE. It had a rain barrow and a hot tub. I don't think we want any of those things. The floors felt wonky - or uneven. It just was not a comfortable house for us. so, we walked away saying, "house #1 is the best".
House 3: This house is out of our price range. in fact, it's $20,000 more than our original budget. We'd already offered $5,000 more on the last house that we lost. But, it seemed like this house needs a lot of work. I was surprised that our Realtor let us go see it. We drove out to the point and we were blown over by the location! it is 2 miles from a state park that is right on the sound. It looks over the sound. There are houses, trees and other things in the way but you can see the tops of the ships that are going through the sound. I seriously, could love seeing that every day. I really am drawn to water and I think a view like that would feed my soul each day.
We walk inside and it has a small living room with weird spray foam stuff along the edging/molding on the floor. So, obviously it has some insulation issues. The kitchen is original to it's 1954 original build date. But after that, it has a large garage/laundry room. It has a large family room with a wood fireplace. It's technically listed as 1600 square feet but also has 900 of unfinished square footage. I'm not sure if that counts the garage or maybe the upstairs that used to be the attic? It's unclear to me what it is.
We liked the house. It needs a lot of sweat equity but it is odd that the house is even as low as it is. So what do we do? We were thinking we offer about $8000 less than the asking price but I truly am scared that with the weekend, we will face a multiple offers situation and lose out. So what do we do??? How do we go over budget? What does that mean financially? This house will stretch us beyond what we wanted to do.
Well, there is one more house to look at... let's see what that house is like...
House 4:The Rental house. This house is a 1 story with basement. The bank that bought it back invested some money into it. There is brand new carpet and paint on the walls. It's a safe house. The upper level is 2 bedrooms 1 bath and nice. Comfortable. To get to the basement, you have to walk outside. You also have to be under 6 foot tall!That floor is for short people!It's an odd layout but it had all new carpeting down there too. The bathroom was old and you had to walk through it to get to a room that had an old stove and nothing else in it. As we talked, we realized that this house would be a perfect rental. It's in our budget - below our budget. We could rent out the basement and cut our payments into half... it would be great for us in the near future.
So now we are torn. Do we choose house 1, 3 or 4?
1 - safe house but won't appreciate too quickly.
2 - that house isn't even an option for us
3 - loved this house. Could we afford the higher cost?The reality is, the house should be selling for $50,000 more than it is listed for. That's encouraging because it means we could fix the house and just flip it if we wanted to.
4 - the conservative direction to go.
Well, we're not conservative people I guess. The reality is, I looked at house #4 and realized it would be like apartment living for us. It's only adding one bedroom to what we have at Mike's condo +a garage. The garage would end up being our storage room and we'd be living a "temporary" life. We've done that for the first 10 months of our marriage. I don't want to do that for the next 2-3 years of our marriage. I need more roots than that.
So, house #4. Now is the question of what to offer.
We yo-yo'd around but after talking to our friend and mortgage expert, we found out about a new program. It allows investors who put down cash for a house, to rehab a house and then secure a conventional 30 year fixed loan within 6 months of buying the house. This would be great because the cash offer we have is through a hard-money loan and the interest rate for us would fluctuate.
That allowed us to think that maybe we should just go in with the best offer possible - asking price.
So, I've emailed our Realtor and told her we're offering asking price + $8.00.
We can only hope and pray after that that we put in the best offer and get this house. This really is the highest we can go and we're making an investment in our future by buying this house. At the same time, I think we will love the house so much that we might never sell it. We'd have to live there everyday and be able to sit out on the deck and watch the sunset over the Puget sound. Yes, that sounds miserable to me...
Which house would you choose?
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