frustration & Broken Hearts

Today has been a crazy day!  I had a dentist appointment and then my first ever trainer appointment.  I ran home and could barely walk up the stairs after the workout my trainer Johnny put me through.  I changed and printed out the list of houses our Realtor was setting up for us to see.
1.  The Fire house - even though it was posted on Thursday, the sellers had already accepted an offer
2.  1/2 price house - multiple offers were already on it.  They wouldn't accept any offers contingent on an inspection.
3.  The drop house - sellers already accepted an offer
4.  The Garage Harp house - okay to see.

3 others she suggested we see:
4. Yucky town
5.  She suggested we see a $130k house
6. The Traffic Town House -

Mike nixed the Yucky town one and we all agreed to meet at the Traffic town House.  The house was cool.  it was a neat setup and would be a fun project.  The problem - it was on a busy busy road.  The other problem...  it is in the town that we do not like driving too.  We've already eliminated this town multiple times.  It just feels really remote and there always seems to be traffic getting there.  As much as the house was okay and maybe it would be in our price range, when we did the math of putting 20k worth of work in it, we'd maybe break even selling the house.  There wasn't instant equity.  It also would be hard to sell because of it's location and proximity to the busy road - the seller had it on the market for almost a year.  So, the farther we drove away from the house, the more it became a definitely NO.

House #2 that we saw - the $130k house.  This house had brand new carpet.  It had the "ugliest countertops [Mike] has ever seen"  They were a fake blue marble.  The house was surprisingly okay.  The garage was a fake.  It may have had a garage door in the front, but the room had been turned into a large family room.  That was very nice!  There was only 1 bathroom with the laundry room as part of it.  But, the biggest negative for that house was it's fenced backyard backed up to the library.  AND we weren't in the best part of that town.  I wasn't opposed to the library that much at first but the more we saw that the entrance was right next door and saw the traffic flow, the less we liked it.  It was an "okay" option.

House #3 - this is the only house from our original list - after driving by 20+ houses that we were going to see.  This is the Garage Harp house.  The house is mid-century and has a lot of the original character.  It is a deferred maintenance house but it wasn't completely stripped since it wasn't a Foreclosed/bank owned home.  It actually felt like a really solid house.  It felt really good.  The Master Bedroom is huge.  Actually, the square footage isn't taking in account a closed in sun-room between the house and garage.  And the very tall basement - there's room for a great family room and a full size bedroom with a closet and window is down there.  The Kitchen is kind of galley like - but walls could be knocked out either way to make it a large great kitchen.  The yard is pretty good. There is even a fenced in area.  This house felt great.  The house also has a new roof - that's huge to me.  It was clean and old.  It has ugly green awnings over all the windows.  But it's a great house.  the garage was huge!  There's still some furniture and personal items in that house since it's an estate sale.  I'm not sure if he had family or what.  The sale has to go through Oregon.  We decided right then that we wanted to make an offer.  I am not up to losing another house.  So.... this is how we made our offer "strong".
1.  We offered asking price
2.  We stated that we would dispose of any items left in the home - thus not requiring the estate management team to empty it or do anything else to the house.
3.  We added an escalation clause.  We will pay $3000 over the highest offer up to a certain amount.

In some ways the asking price is fair based on comps.  Comps are actually all over the place - they range from 60k to 230k.  The more we talked with our Realtor, the more we feel that once this house is fixed up with a nice kitchen, updated lighting and flooring... it will definitely be worth 230k itself.  We have instant equity in this house!  The garage could be made part of the house and we have room to add another garage. It's got "charlie" areas - meaning we have ways to have space for my dog but also keep other zones allergy-free for Mike.

And here's the funny kicker - the house ends in 8. The street is an even number.  the zip code is an even number.  So is it a sign?

We sent our offer in this morning - first thing.  Now, we have to wait a couple days for Oregon to respond.  Pray that this is the house!  As my parents said after I said, "we found an awesome house" - they said, "We've heard that before..."   But they were supportive after that comment... it was a fair comment.  But I really would like this house.  It's in our budget!  It's got the projects we can do to make it a great house.  it's got character.

Oh - I am already really invested in this house....Last night I was analyzing and looking at the aerial view via Bing, the google maps satellite and street views.  As Mike said, " you've only had your heart broken 3 other times...."  so I'm hoping that I don't get a broken heart from emotionally investing in this house.  At the same time, we gave this house our strongest offer.  We can only go as far as we went.

Best of news in the next post?  I hope so!

Driving around

I created a table of houses.  I've listed the following:
1.  Picture of the house
2.  MLS #
3. Address/location
4. Foreclosure price - the price the bank bought the house back for
5. Price the house was first listed at and date
6.  Notes/ history and information that i can gather from zillow/redfin
7 The current price
8. Status: This could be that it's "active"/Pending or I've used it to add numbers to help me sort the houses by particular orders.

This table is just in Word but was very helpful in helping me track the houses.  As their status changed to "pending" I would just sort the table and move those houses to a different page.  I am still tracking the houses we made offers on.  If anything, I want to know what they sold for.  Maybe it's trying to rub salt into an open wound but ultimately, I still believe we will end up with the best house at the right time.  So far, it hasn't been any of the other houses.  It's okay.  It really is.  I still got depressed after losing out on the last house and I really feel like the pickings/options have slimmed down tremendously.  In fact, I'm starting to see houses that sold for $80,000 in November or January re-listed at $180,000.  It's crazy to me that there really is still a housing market out there but only for those investors with the money and the means to jump in as soon as a house is listed.  We move a little slower.

So, Saturday we drove around several houses.  I included houses in our budget that were in neighborhoods we had already x'd out.  I think a part of me wanted to see if the houses were in weird awesome pockets and they should be ones we jump on.

We compiled the following list of houses we wanted to see.
1.  The Fire House - This house foreclosed in December and then there was a fire recently.  They listed this house at $80,000.  I walked around the house - the ceiling and roof would need to be replaced in the whole house.  In fact, it was probably a total gut job.  BUT for $80,000 in the town that it was in?  The property was over .5 acres.  The more we thought about it, we could even store everything in the garage and go rent something really cheap while we slowly fixed up that house for the price it was listed.  I even looked at cheap trailers to live in or ways to build garages with a flat above for cheap.
2.  The 1/2 price house - this house was listed at 114k.  It was pending and then 3 days later, it's listed for $64,5000.
3.  The drop house - this house is listed at $156k but it's been at that price for one month.  Therefore, based on it's current schedule, it should drop 10-20k in the next 7 days.
4. The hidden Garage Harp house - this house was surprising.  It's listed as a 2 bedroom 1 bath house - 1380 square feet.  The neighborhood was great!  From the street, you can see the Port of Tacoma.  There is lots of privacy for the house even though it's a corner house.  There was a garage sale across the street.  The lady was selling a harp; my mom has always wanted a harp.  Mike told me to go talk with her.  So, I found out the harp was handmade by her son and she was selling it for $10.  I don't know if it's a good harp, it's pretty.  It needs a little work but for $10 - Mike wouldn't let me walk away without buying it.  He didn't want to hear me say 5 minutes later, "I should have bought it for $10...."
Anyway, I talked with the lady over the sale and asked her about the house.  She said a man lived there by himself for years.  He was finally moved to an Alzheimer's unit and now the house was for sale so he must have died.  She said the neighborhood was great - that the houses on either side of her were recently bought and updated/fixed-up.  As we drove around, the street has new and old houses on it.  It seems like a good neighborhood.

So that's our list for the Realtor...  We'll see what happens Monday night.  

The last couple roller coasters

Well, we chose that house with the view of the sound.  We offered asking price + $8 on the house #3.  10 days later, we found out that we didn't get the house.  It was a long depressing roller-coaster.  I know we were the first ones to offer but we offered on a Friday.  They had the weekend to get more offers.  THEN... on the Wednesday after we sent our offer, they had us sign a document acknowledging the fact that we know there are multiple offers.  5 days later - so 10 days after we submitted our offer - we lost out.  I don't know how much that house sold for but I'm sure it is a lot more than we offered.  We offered our max.  In fact, we went $20,000 OVER our budget for that house.  The irony is that if we had offered asking price on the other 2 houses, we would have won those houses.  In fact, one house has closed and I found out that it sold for $600 more than we offered.  That's how much we missed out on the Fishbowl house.

That depressed me for a little bit but at the time, we offered the max we were comfortable with for that house.  And who knows...  all the wiring and plumbing had to be fixed on that house and it was in a fishbowl.

So, waiting 10 days for the result of that latest house and traveling for work...  we haven't looked at houses for a long time.  We have a time scheduled for next Monday night with our Realtor.  I'm slowly x'ing the houses off my chart because they are changing to Pending before we can even go see them...  oh the joys of the hunt!