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!

Back on the Hunt

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?