Drivebys and the Green Rambler & MCM houses

I drove by about 10 houses tonight.  It's always interesting to do drive bys.  You learn a lot about the neighborhood.  My poor dog, Charlie, was super patient and didn't budge from his curled up ball on the seat for hours.  I have a great and patient Golden Retriever that can't live with us until we get a house.  I actually kept about 6+ houses on my list, although a few were out of our price range.  I can hope that the bank would take less right?  Our Realtor said the average house is going for 3% less.  I'm shooting for about 10%+ less at this point.

There is a house that I'm really excited (the Green Rambler) about but unfortunately, it is set back a bit from the road and people were standing in the driveway.  I decided I liked the neighborhood.  The house is on a street that dead-ends into a cul-de-sac.  We both grew up on cul-de-sacs and we're big fans.  I decided it could wait until Saturday to see the actual house in person.  I did do a lot of satellite stalking and Google Maps stalking.  Also, that house is technically 15,000 over our budget but there's always a slim bit of hope right?  I was driving by all these houses and would see additional ones that didn't show up on my searches.  I wrote down the addresses for several houses but after researching, I see that they are all about 100,000 out of my price range and the bulk of those were Short Sales.  We have decided that Short Sales do not work with our schedule and financing situation, so we're sticking with bank-owned and owner sellers.

There are a lot of questions of this house.  Our Realtor knows the listing agent and he said the bank was going back and forth with a buyer but we could go see it on Saturday.  He did tell her that there was some water damage and that is why this house was on the market for such an extreme difference of the other houses.

You can see in the picture of the bedroom that there are lot so of holes in the wall, I think it might have had copper wiring and pipes - so someone went through the house and stole those elements to sell.



These are the other houses I drove by:

This one is the Gardener's Delight (all dead now of course)This house, I saw in the dark so it was okay.  It obviously had a huge ornamental garden at one point.  Even the garage is turned into a green house.  It might be too big of a project for one (me) who really only wants a low maintenance yard.  

This house is MCM - meaning Mid-Century Modern.  It was built in 1956 and it "needs tlc"  When I drove by, I think it's pretty good.  It's in a good neighborhood on the street that it's on.  Houses on it's street are going for about double what we'd want to get this house for.  My one complaint was that people drove by me on the street going really fast.  It's not necessarily a dead-end street but it just goes into neighborhood so I was surprised by how fast they were driving.  

This is a HUD home in an area that we'd love to live in.  There have been 3 foreclosures in our price range in the last 6 months - that is a good thing!  It makes the competition stiff, so while this house looks odd and is smaller than we like, it's in an area we really like.  I didn't drive by it because it was completely the opposite direction for everything else I was looking at.  So, it's on the list and we'll see if we can go see it on Saturday with the Realtor.  

I eliminated this blue house.  I wrote "Cars".  Literally, there were about 10 cars per house - people were parked on the yard, driveways, sidewalks and side of roads.  It's claustrophobia to me and I don't like it.  So, this house is off the list.  

This house has no pictures of the inside.  I've kept it on the list.  Unfortunately, it was after driving through this super great neighborhood so I think it looks worst than it would have if I had come directly from the blue house above instead of the nice house below.  

This house was great!  It was on a cul-de-sac.  It had a path to a park from the circle.  I'd love this house but the reality is, it's currently listed at 50k more than our max budget.  There is no way it will come down to our budget.  

This Red Farmhouse is only 1000 square feet.  There is an unfinished basement, but it seriously was in a rural area and would be a pain to get to for any visitors and family.

TIP: Evaluate how important family is to you.  We currently live 30-45 minutes away from our family. Most of the houses on the list are even farther away.  We really have to figure out the balance of this with what we do everyday.  

So just based on the pictures and the little I've said to describe the neighborhoods - which one would you go for?  I'm excited to finally go see the houses on Saturday so we can move forward to making a decision.  

Sadness and Madness

Today, we heard back from the Realtor - it's never a good sign when she can't get a hold of the listing agent.  At least, that is what I've decided.  The house that we wanted to bid on (and we were going to low ball offer on in hopes we'd end up at our max) had multiple offers and the bank accepted one on Monday.  So, we missed out.  I'm mad - I had already started making lists in my head and figuring out steps of things to do when we got the house.  It's disheartening.  I'm thinking this might be a regular cycle for the next couple months as we try to find a house and get a steal of a deal...  please pray for us, cross your fingers and send up thoughts of hope.  We're back on the hunt...
Lesson learned: Jump when you find the house and be ready to be disappointed.  

Graffitti, foreclosures and anger

It's interesting to see what an angry homeowner will do when they leave their home.  Today, we visited two houses.  1.  A foreclosure that has been on the market since 2009.  We had about 10 minutes to look through windows and walk around it before the Realtor got there.  The funny things we found were drip-dried paint on the front porch and windows; green spray paint on the glass front door and through the window, we saw that someone wrote, "I Love Vaginas" in green spray paint on the kitchen floor. Later, when we walked through the house, we found more poured paint on the carpets in the bedrooms.  None of these things really bothered us.  We know whatever house we buy will be a fixer-upper.  The damaged carpet isn't a big deal because we want hardwoods in every room anyway.  

I Googled some images and found the following examples of other foreclosure vandalism.

 

You can find some fun pictures of houses at http://uglyhousephotos.com.  Do you have any pictures of houses you've visited?  What would you do to your house if you had to foreclose?  What did you do?  Why?