Buy a house in the country

And though we still have a lot of organizing to do, I’m actually starting to feel settled. I keep murmuring to myself, “Wow, I live here now.”

So much has happened since my last post!

• I got 3 homeowner’s quotes. It looks like our coverage will come in somewhere around $575-$650, depending on which extras we decide on. I’m still working on figuring out whether each company offers full replacement or depreciated cost replacement on various parts of the policy.

• We did all the loan paperwork on Friday. Because we discovered I have NO credit score (long story on that one), it looked iffy as to whether the Freddie Mac automated underwriting would accept me as a co-borrower on the loan. Thankfully, my loan officer is clever, and didn’t include my monthly income, but DID include my other assets (stock & mutual funds, etc.). Our loan was well within the limits of just Richard’s income and our downpayment was 40%, so it accepted me as a co-signer on the loan - thus I will FINALLY start to have a credit history. Amen! We should have our letter of commitment done by Wednesday - a few days ahead of our Friday financing deadline.

• Our realtor managed to negotiate our price down by $2,500 from our original offer, to account for some of the items turned up on the inspection. The asking price had already been lowered $10,000 to account for the roof & paint issues, so in the end, it worked out pretty well. The listing agent was pressuring our agent, saying that they had a backup offer—and Joan, bless her, stood up to them and negotiated the price down for us. We decided not to try to squeeze every last penny out of the deal and thus run the risk of losing the house to someone else. We really want it!

The best part? Our offer on this house (which is almost twice the size of the 1st one we made an offer on) is only $1000 more than the walkaway we gave the first time around. In effect, we’re getting nearly twice the house for only $1000 more—and the taxes are lower in this neighborhood than the other one.

Yay! We’re almost homeowners! It looks as though it should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Wow! Yesterday was an intense day of phone calls related to the house. I spoke to our loan officer, the attorney handling the sale, and got my marching orders for all the stuff we need to get done in the next few weeks.

1. Schedule the structural inspection (this Thursday)
2. Collect all the stuff for the loan application (pay stubs, W-2s, driver’s licenses, bank statements)
3. Research homeowners insurance quotes
4. Schedule the appraisal
5. Finish liquidating assets for downpayment

That’s really just the beginning, but I know I’ll feel a lot better once the major paperwork is completed. Then there will be the MOVING checklist….ooooh, that’s a long one. One step at a time, Katie…

Right now, we have a tentative closing date of October 10th—heck, that’s 3 weeks from TODAY!

We found another house in a quiet neighborhood, made an offer last night of asking + $200, and it was accepted! The sellers are in Hong Kong, so paperwork transfer and communication will be a little more complicated than usual, but we are looking forward to moving ahead in the house-buying process.

The nice thing about this house is that there is there’s a second kitchen and separate entrance downstairs—so we rent it out as an apartment to graduate students, or something.

Oh, I’m soooooo excited!

They refused our counteroffer outright.

Well, it was worth a try, but I wish the outcome had been different. Our agent says we may have “insulted” the seller by offering too little the first time. Oy, who knew people’s pride was so wrapped up in their home? I guess you learn as you go.

Sigh…back to square one again.

Well, they countered with full price, and we countered again meeting them halfway between full price and our original offer. The house is for sale by someone with power of attorney for the actual seller, which we think means it’s likely an adult child of an incapacitated or ill parent. I have a sneaking suspicion that the adult child is trying to milk as much out of the sale as possible for their own benefit. Unfortunately, there are some points about the house that will always limit its utility, and that don’t make it worth the price they’re asking—especially now that the real estate market is cooling off.

Apparently they had an offer above list price a while ago, but the financing fell through—so no sale. They dropped the asking price $10,000 afterwards and did some cosmetic work on the house. I suspect they think that the cosmetic work justifies paying full asking price, but for the same price in a slightly more distant neighborhood, we could have nearly twice the house. The advantage for us is that it’s close to the elementary school, and my husband can bike to work instead of drive, which will save us on gas money.

Our financing is solid, and we know we can close the sale at the price we countered. I wish the seller would make up his mind already and give us an answer - if it’s a “no” at this point, I don’t want to waste any more time. I worry that the fact that the seller is taking a while to reply may mean that they’re entertaining multiple offers - but on the other hand, if the answer is a firm “no”, I have a feeling they would have told us by now—so maybe it means they’re thinking seriously about our counter?

Arrrrrgh. I just want the waiting to be over. Time to clean the house and distract myself from the suspense.

...and we’re making an offer on it today! Love the neighborhood and the trees in the backyard. It’s definitely more suburban than country, but after much consideration we decided to look for houses in neighborhoods with higher resale value. Yippee! I hope the buyers come back with a reasonable counteroffer!

The prospect of being in big debt for the first time in my life kind of scares me (especially since I won’t be working for the next year), but we calculated everything (house price, mortgage payments, insurance, etc) as a percentage of Richard’s income. I think we’ll be okay.

I spent all day yesterday with the realtor looking at places. Exciting!

I’m hoping to have this one ticked off by the end of the summer.

Must stop renting! Our landlord is not the brightest bulb in the box… The upstairs tenant turned on her heat, and her furnace started SMOKING in our basement. We immediately vented the house (the whole thing REEKED), and cut off the gas and electricity running to the furnace. Turns out our landlord never got the furnace checked since he bought the house and the thing is ANCIENT!

Thank goodness it didn’t happen while we were asleep. We could have died from Carbon Monoxide inhalation or something…