Everything is moving along!

We had our home inspection last Tuesday and everything went well. There were only minor issues - leak in master bath (seller agreed to fix), rotted post on porch and a few tree limbs touching the roof that need to be trimmed. The inspector couldn't get up on the roof because it was covered with ice. But, he was able to get into the attic and mentioned that there were no leaks.

We locked in our mortgage rate on Wednesday. We're doing a no PMI mortgage, which is nice. The house was appraised on Friday and it came in just above the selling price. We also made our second deposit on Friday. I think that was probably the biggest check I've ever written. We are scheduled to close on March 26.

We've been quite busy searching for the perfect appliances at the best price, trying to figure out what colors to paint each room and getting estimates for painting and carpet. It's a little hard without being able to get into the house. But, we want to have a rough idea of how much everything we'd like to do is so we can make decisions on what to do now and what can wait.

Megan Update: Offer Accepted!!!

After months and months of searching for our first home, we have finally found it. After a day or two of negotiations, our offer on Megan was accepted and we are thrilled! We ending up spending a little more than we wanted to, but in the end, I think we will be extremely happy we did as this could be our forever home. We have a meeting with our realtor tomorrow morning and have scheduled the home inspection for Tuesday morning. Hopefully all goes well!

Update: Megan

We've been thinking about Megan all weekend and even though we said last week that we were at our max with our first offer, we reconsidered and decided to counter. We just didn't want to lose the house over an extra $50 per month on our mortgage payment. We found out they received another offer this morning. So, I expect that the sellers are reviewing both offers as we "speak" and I'm hoping they make a decision quickly. We are still $5000 lower than they want for the house, but this is our best and final offer. If we lose it, then at least we know we did everything we could to get the house. We'll definitely have to make some sacrifices because we are upping our offer. We'll just have to live with the furniture we have now and deal with an unfurnished room in the basement and perhaps an empty eat-in-kitchen for a while...and why not, we'll already have one empty bedroom. Thankfully, we already have a dining room set. We also may not be able to replace all of the carpet we wanted to all at once. We may have to stick with just the master bedroom, which needs it the most. So, please cross your fingers (and toes if possible) for us and I'll keep you updated.

Update: Big Brown

Our fantastic new realtor just let us know that she got an update on Big Brown. The bank completed the appraisal yesterday and the seller's realtor should have the report by Thursday. So, hopefully the end is near. Of course, I wouldn't bet money on it.

New Realtor

After some strange and uncomfortable moments with our realtor in the last few days, we decided that we just could not continue working with her. We spoke to the managing broker and she hooked us up with a new agent, who seems fantastic. We are really excited to work with someone new and look forward to viewing more properties. Our contract with Big Brown is about to expire, so we are hoping she will be able to get a status update before we extend the contract on that house. I'm hoping they will be able to give her an estimated length of time that this will go on. Although it's only been about 2.5 months, it seems like we've been waiting forever!

No deal on Megan

We got a response on Megan today around 4:00 pm. The sellers countered back and we were about to counter back to them. But, we discussed it and decided that we really cannot go any higher. It would just stretch our budget too much and although we really liked the house and it had great potential, I think it just wasn't meant to be ours. Oh well, time to move on.

Two weeks ago we looked at this cute cape that I mentioned in a past entry that might work for us. It also needed some work and not all the bedrooms were on the same floor, so I dismissed it at the time. But, it has been in my thoughts ever since. I spoke to Michael about it yesterday and we looked at the photos. We decided maybe we should take a second look and consider making an offer since it is more within our comfort zone price wise. Of course, we discovered that it is already under contract. I really do have the worst luck. But, I suppose everything happens for a reason, right?

We still have not heard anything on Big Brown.

Megan Update

We submitted and offer on Megan last night and gave a deadline of today at 5:00 pm for the seller to respond. We also included a nice personal note to the sellers letting them know how much it would mean to us to purchase their home. I really hope we hear back soon and that it is good news. They will most likely counter, but we really can't go much higher. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

We'll call her Megan (house #2)

We went out with our realtor again this morning to see a house that was just reduced and now within the higher end of our budget. We'll call her Megan.

Megan is a 2200 square foot 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home with a 2-car garage, finished basement, a farmer's porch and an in-ground pool. It was built in 1999 and according to the tax assessment, the pool was installed in 2006. A pool really isn't something we are looking for. It just seems to come with every house we are interested in...weird. So, this is a pretty good house and just looks like it needs some cosmetic changes.

What we liked about the house:

• located on a cul-de-sac
• 2-car garage with two doors
• open kitchen/living room
• eat-in kitchen and separate dining room
• wood floors on main level
• finished basement with two separate rooms
• pantry closet
• white woodwork and trim
• large master with walk-in closet
• laundry on main level
• good size level lot
• farmer's porch
• shed in backyard
• central air
• vinyl siding
• gas cooking

Things that need work:

• kitchen (and bath) cabinets are ugly light wood with weathered look and need to be painted
• every single wall is white and dirty so every last one of them need to be painted (same with moulding & baseboards)
• all three bathrooms have linoleum floors, which are not our taste. eventually we would want to tile.
• the counter top in the kitchen is a light blue laminate...ugly, but in good condition, we would eventually want to replace with granite.
• appliances are mismatched and we would likely need to replace them (definitely need fridge & microwave right away)
• outside trim is extremely dirty and needs repainting
• there are very large vines growing through the farmers porch that need to be removed.
• there are a few discolored spots on the kitchen ceiling, looks like there may have been a leak at some point, so we'll need to look into that.

All in all, Megan is less work than Big Brown. But, the asking price is $20,000 more than Big Brown as well. We're definitely considering putting an offer in on this house, but we need to hear back from our realtor about the rules of putting in an offer on a second house. We don't want to withdraw our offer on Big Brown at this point just in case Megan's seller doesn't accept our best offer (which is probably $15,000 less than the asking price).

The one I was excited about

On Sunday, we ended up only looking at one house. It was the one I was excited to see. It was due for a price reduction, making it affordable to us, and it looked great in the photos. It had a great layout and more storage space than I have ever seen in my entire life. The kitchen had been redone a few years ago and had cherry cabinets, wood floors, stainless steel appliances & granite counter tops. However, the appliances looked pretty old, the granite wasn't shiny anymore and the cabinets were a little rundown (almost looked like the stain was fading). The master was a good size but the other 3 bedrooms were tiny. There was one tiny half bath downstairs and then a full very out-dated bath at the top of the stairs. The 3/4 bath in the master was so tiny, they couldn't fit the sink/vanity inside. That was out in the "hallway" that connected the closet and bath in the master. It was clear when looking at the floor in the master that there were some pretty hefty structural problems. It looked u shaped and when you walked to the middle of the room, you almost felt like you sunk a few inches. Overall, even with new carpeting and fancier fixtures, they house was just outdated and very overpriced. It's too bad because it was a great neighborhood.



At this point, we are just waiting for new listings to come on the market or for more expensive homes to have price reductions. We are also still waiting for any news on Big Brown.

Update - Big Brown

We found out that the bank finally assigned someone to the file on Wednesday, which means once the BPO (or market analysis) is done, they will actually look at our offer. This brings us a little further in the process, but because of the sheer volume of these short sales at the bank, we could still be waiting for a long time. But, this is a step in the right direction.

We have been looking at houses in the meantime and we have seen one that is somewhat promising, a really cute cape. But, since we saw it in the middle of a snowstorm, we didn't really get any photos of the backyard and we don't remember it at all. So, we'll have to take another look if we decide we are interested down the road. We're also going to look at a few more houses tomorrow, one of which I'm pretty excited to see. So, I'll keep you posted.

Big Brown - background info

On December 10, we put an offer on a house, which we will call "Big Brown". It is a 2300-ish sq foot 3 bed/ 2 bath house with a 2-car garage, giant finished basement and good size yard with in-ground pool. Houses like this normally are not in our budget and we were super excited to find it since it is large enough to be our forever home. We figured there had to be a catch and of course, there was. Big Brown is a short sale, which means our fate is in the hands of a random person at a bank somewhere, possibly not even in New England. Also, the current homeowner is a heavy smoker and the place reeks. I'm talking slap you in the face when you walk through the door reeks. After much deliberation we decided that even though ServPro gave an estimate of $3000-4000 to get rid of the smoke smell, it was worth it for this house. So, the waiting began.

On January 4, we learned that there was a second offer on Big Brown. We figured since we low-balled that the other offer was higher than ours and decided to amend our original offer. We went up $10,000. We also found out that day that they were putting Big Brown on a "pending" status and would no longer be showing the house. The seller's realtor told our realtor that our new offer was very close & similar to the other offer.

On January 14, we found out that the bank had yet to look at either offer because they had not assigned the BPO (market analysis) yet. The seller's realtor said she expected the bank to assign this to a third party by the end of the following week (Jan 23).

This brings us to the present...where we are getting very used to waiting, waiting and more waiting.


For more info on short sales, click here.