Posts Tagged ‘Mortgages’

Surprise…. surprise…

Thursday, March 13th, 2014

We didn’t close yesterday, shocking I know. We were advised at the closing table that documentation was missing from one of the co-signers and then it turned into a mad dash to get everyone on the phone.  We had to make sure paperwork was notarized, and they wanted a copy faxed to them so we could attempt to close the same afternoon, however the faxes never went through so in the process of that not working the co-signer ran to the FedEx store to have the paperwork overnighted down.  They wanted the fax just to start the process, but they required the physical copy because of the seal.

So, co-signer paid the $30 to have it delivered before noon 3/13.  Due to the wind-storms that flew through the north east last night, the plane didn’t take off until after Midnight and was some-how re-routed from New York down to Memphis, TN.  The document (per the tracking info) was then DRIVEN to Baltimore, MD and has been sitting there ever since. We got in touch with a rep at FedEx and they noted that due to the winds it was delayed last night, and unfortunately due to the winds today it’s delayed until tomorrow.  The rep said that it would be there by Noon on 12/14, lets just hope that’s the case.

So everyone is still all over the place, thankfully the owner/realtor gave us until Monday to get this all finalized (per her addendum to the contract). They sellers already signed over what they could, at this point they’re just waiting on the check, and due to their scheduling conflicts this week they’ve also given power of attorney to the lawyer so that she can represent them for this signing when we actually can finalize everything.

Utility wise, everything is on in our names but they still hold the note on the house until the check is handed over to them. I’m hoping nothing happens at the house between now and signing, but we should be ok.  Sean and I are both at the end of our ropes, we’re sick of this entire process and just want it to end.  Hopefully we’ll have everything settled by tomorrow.  I just want the keys, I just want to get in there and clean the place up and start our lives.

It’s just way too damn frustrating to deal with anymore.

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We’re almost there!!

Tuesday, March 11th, 2014

It’s been a constant up and down, and I know I’ve bitched about it quite a bit but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  We’re closing on Wednesday 3/12 at 4pm.  I’m excited, but not to the point where I’m jumping up and down.  I’m so over this entire process that I just want my keys and the current owners to fuck off and then I can just work on making it OUR home.

We’re doing the final walk through today (3/11), it’s odd to do it the day before the closing, but we’re obligated to get another pest inspection (per banks request) and since we need to be there for that we’re just going to get that over with today.  They supposedly turned the electric back on, but we’re still not sure as to whether or not the water is on in the home. This is an area where I’m a little freaked out based on the fact that we’ve had such cold weather in a home with no heat that even with an enclosed basement there’s still the issue of having some type of a pipe blow up.  Even though I’m sure there’s some law telling us not to, if the water isn’t on in the home today I’m going to locate the main at the back of the house and turn it on.  They were morons for shutting everything down in the first place, if a pipe bursts it’s on them.

Our other focus is the attic, we know that there were a few leaks and it’s an area we need to address almost immediately, but since we had the house inspected more and more shingles have come off of the roof, leaving other areas exposed. We have every intent of redoing the roof, or just patching until we can afford the complete gut job that it really needs. I just want to make sure that more and more water hasn’t shown up to the point that there’s discoloration on the ceilings. Nipping it in the bud ASAP is our only option.

Everything else is minor cosmetic shit, and primarily stuff that would just need to be cleaned / painted. Thankfully, for the most part, the house is white so I don’t really have to worry about throwing paint on the walls right away. My focus is just getting all of the cleaning supplies together so I can get in there and do my thing. I probably won’t be thrilled about being a homeowner until everything is in and settled.  We have furniture to purchase, cleaning supplies to purchase, we’ve already got a good chunk of the kitchen necessities already purchased. I figured when I get over to the discount stores to start stocking up on cleaning supplies, I’ll pick up a few plates/cups/bowls to hold us over until I can get up to NY to pick up the rest of my belongings.  It’s just going to be a LONG drawn out process but by this time next month I’ll be able to sit down and really just take it all in.

We’ll be in the house long before then, but it’s going to be complete chaos until we can get everything put away and organized. Thankfully we’ve got so little to start with that it won’t take long to get everything to the spots it needs to go. I think the most complicated aspects of moving, for us, is based solely on electronics. Laptops, Desktops, iMacs, TV’s, Game Consoles…. which is primarily everything in Sean’s office.   I’m worried that my desk won’t survive the move, but that’s because the top isn’t really secured to the base. This could mean that moving it around would be easier since I’ll have the drawers out and the top off of it, but I hope it can be properly re-secured when we get it into the house. I don’t need the 27″ iMac falling through to the floor, that’s just too much damn money to have to shell out when it can go to more important places – like the roof.

Sean and I have done some shopping around, and have found some furniture that we’re interested in but it seems that wherever we go we wind up finding something for cheaper.  I found a couch in Furniture & More that I thought would be perfect for the Living Room, it was $499, I could get it with a queen sleeper for $699. Now, I know that seems really inexpensive for a couch but you have to remember with the huge den in the back of the house we don’t have the need for a sofa that’s going to get a lot of wear and tear. With that said, I was happy when I found a couch in Big Lots (of all places) for $360 that was both comfortable but in a color tone that I actually liked. I didn’t have to customize a damn thing and as long as I’ve got a uHaul I could just take it home.  I downright refuse to purchase any type of Sofa from a thrift shop, even though a good chunk of my furniture will be purchased from one. There are just certain things that you can wash and disinfect, and then there’s other things – like a couch – that just can’t fit into the washing machine to make it worth it for me.  BUT that’s the only thing I’m buying NEW so my being picky about it won’t ultimately kill our wallets in the end.

So yea… we’re FINALLY closing on this thing and there’s A LOT to do. I haven’t really been sleeping very well, but I think the stress is playing a part in that. I woke up around 5am, couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed until 7am and now 3 hours later I’m still going through emails and everything on my computer just to keep my brain functioning.  I’m gonna hop in the shower and head out to run some errands, we’re meeting with the pest control company around 4pm at the house so anything that I wanted to accomplish today will have to be done by 3:30. Good thing it’s not very much… I still wish I’d had enough drive to leave the house before 10am though.. I was oddly enough in the mood for breakfast from McDonalds today. Nutri-Grain just didn’t fill that void, but at least there’s something in my stomach to get me moving.

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What do you want now… my first born?

Monday, March 3rd, 2014

Sean and I have decided that once everything is finalized with this sale, we’ll never be purchasing another home. The process for buying a home is the most time consuming, stress inducing, bull shit situation I’ve ever been in. So many people, for the longest time, were just handed mortgages and then boom – economy crashed and there’s foreclosures everywhere. Now? The process is pretty much to the point where on top of the last 5 years of your financing, they’ll take your first born to seal the deal.

Originally we were going to close on Feb 28th, we were set to close on this date but then some random tax stuff came up for our co-signer, and it was then going to be delayed for another week. We were super happy to find out that we’d be closing on March 7th, then we come to find out that this random tax stuff would require information from the IRS that we’re having A LOT of trouble getting our hands on.  So, we went ahead and submitted an addendum to the sale contract and we’re basically sitting tight until the bank and the IRS can get everything worked out.

The issue? The owners are freaking morons. Their realtor was never given the green light that we’d be 100% closing on the 28th, so they decided that they would be smart to just up and move out the day before the original scheduled closing. For people who couldn’t afford to fix ANYTHING in the house, it surprised me that they actually had the money for a down payment on a new house. So while the house is actually in their sons name, they decided to just walk away. Now their realtor (their daughter-in-law) has gone as far as requesting that we move into the house before everything is finalized with the bank and pay them $1700 a month in rent plus utilities. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Why the hell would we do something so stupid? Based on the issues we’re dealing with theirs no guarantee that we’ll EVER close on this house – so why would I tap into my down payment just to make sure that they can cover their own mortgage because her in-laws are dicks? Their financial problems are not my problems, or my fault.

For the past two months we’ve completely been at the mercy of the bank, who’s asked us to provide things to them that I feel are more of an invasion of privacy than something that’s pertains to the loan. Every deposit to the bank accounts, they want to know why it was made and a copy of the checks. They demanded all of the pages of the statements so they can see how our money is spent, and I’m sorry but the fact that I don’t feel like cooking on some nights shouldn’t be their business – how dare you question how often I purchase a pizza. They originally requested deposits, withdrawals aren’t their fucking business.

I’ve had to write a letter to the bank to inform them that Sean has access to his own bank account because it’s a joint account. I’ve had to write letters advising why W2’s are different than Taxes filed when they’re incapable of reading the “Other Assets” section of the tax returns (What the fuck is the point of even providing you WITH the tax returns if I’m just going to have to tell you to READ them!?) We’ve given them year to date income for the past two years, they’re demanding that we file our 2013 (even though by LAW I don’t have to do that until April and I haven’t received all of my 1099’s anyway so I’m going to wind up filing an extension).

We’ve had to dig out the paperwork for the lease for Sean’s mothers house, they’re also requesting he be removed from the lease prior to the sale, which is something that’s not gonna happen based on the fact that he’s her sole beneficiary and needs to be on the lease in order to take over the house in the future… so they can go screw off on that one. They also mentioned that divorce paperwork (for a divorce finalized in 1999) may be pertinent to the loan as well.  The level of prying is fucking absurd, I feel more violated by the bank than I ever could by a visit to a gynecologist.

So yea, this is a process I don’t ever want to go through again. It’s a constant up and down, and emotions are running hot because we’re past being anxious and are now downright impatient to just get this over with. When we were originally provided with our new closing date Sean and I went out and I stocked up on everything I could possibly need for my new kitchen. Pots & Pans, Cooking Utensils, Mixing Bows, Bakeware, Cutting Boards, Knives… everything you could need for a kitchen. The only thing we didn’t pick up were plates but that’s because the ‘patterns’ at Walmart are ugly as sin, and set that has service for 4 for $30 seemed extreme to me. I can easily pick up service for 8 from Dollar Tree, and that’s exactly what I’m going to end up doing.

The only upside is the fact that we’ve got a pretty massive storm coming through here over the next few days and since we weren’t moving in this weekend we weren’t going to have to deal with the snow to slow us down. I’m also kind of hoping that something happens at the house that forces them to actually fix it up. Since the contracts aren’t finalized, they’re still the owners so they’re responsible for anything that happens to it until we’ve been handed the keys. Is it wrong of me to kind of hope something happens? Of course. BUT that doesn’t mean Mother Nature feels the same way and when you factor sleet, heavy rain, and then about a foot of snow sitting on top of a roof that’s in need of repair… it may wind up saving me the $10,000+ that is required to replace the roof. If they aren’t willing to fix it to finalize the sale of the house… they’re stuck with a $1700 a month mortgage on a house that no one lives in.  Oh freaking well.

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Hopefully looking up…

Friday, January 10th, 2014

After waiting for useful information for over a week, we finally heard back from our broker.  We’re switching loan types and have the quotes from the contractors ready to go. We’re going to need to borrow about $10,000 on top of the loan. With this, however, we’re going to counter because the owners of the home clearly are uninterested in fixing ANYTHING prior to closing. With this, we’re pretty much stuck.  Now, if we’re able to save up the $10,000 over the next few months (which is possible with both our incomes) we should be able to off-set the increase on the loan if they aren’t willing to budge on the contract price.

The way additional funding works would be to have the money put into an escrow account after the sale, and then for every tradesman that comes in we pay them and then are reimbursed. With that, it’s a good idea to have the money saved up based on the fact that we’re going to need it anyway. So when everything is fixed up, we’ll have that money back in our pocket. We’ll either use it to furnish the house OR to just pay $10k off of the overall mortgage and hopefully be able to get a little bit ahead.

We’ll have to see how everything goes either way, but for now we at least have the ball rolling. Since the owners aren’t fixing anything the closing date is no longer Jan 25th. Now we’re looking at a 60 day close so we’ll more than likely be getting into the house sometime in March if everything goes well. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, we’re both in love with this house and I’ve already decorated my office in my mind so of course I’m itching to just get in there and start making changes.

Since the house was built in the late 70’s/early 80’s I’m hoping (with fingers crossed) that there’s hardwood floor under the ugly carpets. If there is, I’m ripping up the carpets and refinishing the hardwood. As ‘warm’ as carpeting can make a home, it’s just another place for smells to linger and allergies to fester. So a few low-pile area rugs and we’re good to go.

wooddesk I’m going with a very muted/modern tone for the office.  A pale grey on the walls, and I’m going to be on the look out for scrap wood so I can build a new desk for myself that suits my immediate needs. I need a wide desk to accommodate the two computers.  I found this desk on Pintrest, and absolutely love it. I think it would work out perfectly because I’ll be able to build it in a way that gives me plenty of work-space without looking like a BS desk out of a big-box store. I have a very, very nice desk at the moment but I’m not overly thrilled about it, and it’s just not big enough. It’s also a weird brown particle board and really just not what I want in a desk. So with the wood planks I can make the desk as wide and as deep as I want and with proper reinforcements I can have plenty of room for a Mac station (two monitors) and my windows station (one monitor). In the middle, to double for support and storage, I’ll get a nice looking filing cabinet and go from there. I’ll leave the outer corners with the saw horses because I think it’s just an awesome effect. Then, hopefully, I’ll figure out a way to repulser my office chair and BOOM – work area done. Now, this is just for the desk itself… I do still have ideas for the walls.

chairrailI’ve always loved the idea of a chair-rail, but never really could figure out how to go about making it work for me. I think going with a two-tone gray (instead of the blues shown in the picture), I can then position the desk so that it’s looking out into the room instead of being up against a wall. This will make me feel like I’m not in a cave, and that’s a big plus for me.  I figure I can get a nice comfy chair for one side of the room and then have the TV in the other corner so I’m all hooked up and ready to go. I think a nice area rug as an accent so I don’t destroy the floors and I’ll be good to go. And of course, this takes care of the general feel of the room but it doesn’t complete everything.

multicanvasI figure the room itself will be fairly pale so I’m going to want a pop of color, for that I’ve found a few paintings on Google Images that I’m interested in, but can’t seem to find anywhere to actually PURCHASE them for a reasonable price. I do like the multi-canvas paintings that have multiple sizes as well. I found one that I really like but I can’t seem to find it in the color tones that I like. Instead of the red/black, I’m hoping to find some type of a purple/white. Of course, I’m not 100% set on this particular image and in reality I could always go out and pick up some canvas and paint something for myself (which I may wind up doing if I can’t find what I’m looking for), but I do know that the creative juices are flowing like all holy hell… I just need to get in there to make everything a reality.

In any event, it’s knocking on 6am and I’m hoping to actually wake up at a some-what reasonable hour (being as I’ve been waking up after 7pm for the past few days). With the cold weather I’ve been staying awake so that the Cat isn’t bothering everyone when he’s looking to head outside. That and the fact that the house is fairly quiet at night so it’s easier to get work done as well.  It’s just a schedule that I’m no longer interested in staying on so :: fingers crossed:: I’ll be able to change it soon.

:: fingers double crossed :: for everything going well with this house too!

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Happy New Year!!

Thursday, January 2nd, 2014

It’s that time again… Everyone has gone out of their way to make resolutions for themselves, and those with actual will-power may make it past day #2. I made it a point to not even kid myself and have no resolutions this upcoming year.  Why? It’s simple.  If you truly wanted to make a change in your life you would have done it already, holding off until the first of the year seems more like a cop-out than anything.  For the past 11 months you’ve wanted to either quit smoking, lose weight, learn a new language, pick up painting, whatever the case may be.  If you haven’t done it in the last year, there’s nothing driving you to get it done this year.

So for me, I told myself my resolution is to completely write-off having a resolution. Not sure if that’s a double negative, but either way the only changes I’m making this year is to hopefully be moved into a new home within the next 90 days. Do I consider it a resolution? No… we’ve been trying to buy a house since October but nothings worked out.

We’ve been under contract on three houses. The first house? The financing fell through so we needed to be released from the contract.  The community that we were looking to move to was black-listed by the lender and there was really nothing more that we could do.  The second? After inspection we found out that the Well was contaminated with Lead and Nitrates, because of this the grounds were more than likely contaminated as well. There were also structural issues, half of the house didn’t work, and the water heater was so rusted by the lead in the water that it was about to rot through the floor.

Now? We’re under contract on a house that we both agree is absolutely perfect and with a few modifications over time it holds the “Dream Home” status.  The bedrooms upstairs are all a decent size, the basement is already finished giving us two guest rooms and a man-cave for Sean’s liking. There’s a good sized kitchen, two car garage, gorgeous floor to ceiling brick work on the fire place, massive family room towards the back end of the house and a nice sized yard that will accommodate a pool and plenty of room for the dog to run around.  The problem? The inspection was scary. While structurally it’s sound, there are numerous plumbing issues from the do-it-yourself finished basement that were listed as “Major Defects”. Now, I’m all for the do-it-yourself type of thing but if you’re selling a house, make sure it’s at least up to code. The random little things that they missed were so stupid it’s mind blowing. For me? It’s one weekend fixing random things for maybe $1200 worth of materials. The fact that I now need to figure out how to get a licensed contractor into a house that I don’t own so this stuff CAN be fixed is where things start to get annoying.

We knew going into this house that a roof was going to be needed, house was built in the late 70’s to early 80’s. More than likely it was never replaced, and it now requires four patches for a recent leak. In theory it would be better to just redo the entire roof so it doesn’t need to be worried about for 10 years, but that’s wishful thinking.  The owners have absolutely no money and are in the process of selling just about everything they own so they can afford to move into assisted living. I feel terrible because they’re such nice people (we got to chat with them during the inspection), but we’re going to have to renegotiate the cost of the house because I know that at least $10,000 worth of work needs to go into it before it’s up to code… knowing that they don’t have that money means that they need to at least come down in price so we can work things out with the bank.

Our broker has already told us that the house doesn’t fit the profile of a FHA mortgage, but we could possibly do a 203k loan (which supposedly is a variation of FHA). With this, we can borrow the estimated amount of money at the same time of the mortgage. So if they come down the $10k, then we can borrow the extra $10k (putting us at our already agreed price on the house) and then fix everything that needs to be fixed. All of which needs to be done by a licensed/certified contractor. So that’s where things get tricky, it also extends our closing date. As of right now we’re supposed to close on Jan 25th 2013. This change would then send us into March. Which, I guess is OK because it starts to get warmer so working on the roof wouldn’t be that big of a deal but it’s still one of those “Will it ever end?” type of situations.

It’s upsetting, it’s frustrating, it’s completely bugging me but life still needs to go on so I need to draw my attention elsewhere.  Thankfully I’ve got quite a of work to do, I stopped for a little while because my show is starting in a few minutes. I don’t sit down for much of anything, not a big TV fan but hopelessly addicted to “Mob Wives” on VH1. Not overly thrilled about this season because the original cast members are my favorite.. BUT the changes they made with this season, seems that there’s going to be more knock-down-drag-out type of fights and that makes me happy. Real or fake, I don’t care. It’s just nice to listen to a NY accent when you’re living in a very… rural… area LOL.

As far as life-changing events are concerned. Sean and I are officially engaged!! 🙂 It’s been 7 years of bouncing between two states and numerous ups and downs but he proposed on Christmas Eve at the tree in town. He was super excited to get me out of the house that night, I had a feeling but it wasn’t confirmed until he dropped down when we got towards the tree. He was super cute about it, of course I said yes. He lit up when I did, and it was very sweet. I can’t wait to start the next chapter, and really hope that everything can work out with the house so that we can get through all of the muck and start planning for a wedding and children. I don’t see myself having a huge wedding, not really the “Look at me!” kind of person, I’m perfectly content with a justice of the peace… but when you’ve got a huge traditional Italian family… things just get complicated heh.

So who knows what this year is going to bring… but I’m not setting any resolutions. I’ll just live one day at a time and take it from there.

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And now we’re back to the drawing board…

Thursday, November 7th, 2013

We, unfortunately, couldn’t get the financing that we needed to move forward on the house so we’re basically back to square one.  We’re out of the contract, we need to get our $1,000 (good grace payment) back from the realtor.  I’m disappointed because I really had my heart set on this house. I had it completely decorated in my head and knew exactly where everything was going to go, what furniture I needed to buy… the works…. but the ‘powers that be’ made it damn-near impossible for us to get into this house, and I want to assume it was for a good reason.  If there wasn’t? I just don’t appreciate being messed with.

The upside, after discussing everything, Sean and I decided that going after a house on leased-land makes absolutely no sense when you factor in that Rehoboth has probably the highest lot rent in the entire state.  This complex was going to charge us $580 a month for the land-lease, and then on top of that it would have been about $700 a month for the mortgage on the house itself.  Coming up with $1300 a month where you don’t even OWN the property that you’re paying for, really doesn’t make sense to either one of us.

So we went back to the drawing board, and have been looking for houses under $250,000 (which aren’t hard to find around here).  We’ve found one that’s really cute, it’s an Estate Sale, the owners children have control of it now and they desperately want out. Case and point… the house was on the market for $269,900 initially, in the past two years of it just sitting there it’s now down to $155,000.  It’s on it’s own property, 3 bed, two bath, family room, dining room, large kitchen, living room, sun porch, 24×28 garage, a big shed, semi-wrap around deck, and the property is massive at half an acre. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but I grew up in New York – the only grass I ever saw was a two foot patch off the curb, so this is a clear upgrade.  The other upgrade is the huge wrap-around drive-way with an island filled with all kinds of flowers.  I like the idea of a wrap-around driveway, never owned one before but I feel it would be beneficial cause I can pretty much come and go without having to move a car.  Granted, we only have one right now – but even still… I’d never have to move.  It’s in a really cute little community, the neighbors seem nice. And by “nice” I mean that they didn’t call the cops while I was poking around on the property to get a feel for the place (without a realtor).

The landscaping has massively overgrown in the past two years, but when looking at older pictures of the home (including the Google Street View) you can see that the owners, at one time, took really good care of the property.  The plus – on the ariel view there was an existing pool in the back yard.  That’s one of my stipulations for owning a home, there either needs to be an existing pool or room for one. In this case, there’s already a deck in place, it’s just the matter of buying the pool and setting it up.  That would obviously be something we do in the future, but it’s good to know it’s a possibility.  So we’re taking the massive undertaking of landscape removal into consideration on our offer.

So I’ve already got a call in with the broker letting him know that we’re changing up the game and won’t need a manufactured loan, we’ll need a conventional mortgage. He’s already got all of our information, so it’s just the matter of him crunching the numbers.  If we can be approved for the price-range that we’re looking for then I think we should be pretty good.  As soon as I know something from him I’ll get in touch with a realtor and do a walk through.  I know by default the house is going to require a lot of work, but that’s something we can work on over the course of time because we won’t have a complex manager knocking on our door to tell us the weeds are getting too high.  We’ll be able to do what we please, when we please and that’s fine by me.

There, unfortunately, is an HOA but for the $150 a year price tag I’m not going to worry about it.  There are houses in there that look like complete and total shit, the owners did not maintain them well at all, so clearly the HOA doesn’t really bother anyone.  Big thing for me would be cleaning up the front yard (at least) by this upcoming Summer (if we take the house, of course).  This way there’s at least some curb appeal so I don’t have to worry about them being dickwads about how the property looks.  If you’re snooping around in my backyard you’re trespassing and I should have position to beat your ass anyway.

So we’ll see how it goes, maybe within the next 24 hours we can start the process of pursuing this house.  We’ve looked at numerous ones, done drive-bys just about everywhere.  This is the only area where I can honestly say that I like the house, it’s close enough to everything where I don’t feel like I’m in the boonies, and it’s still close enough the water so I can at least enjoy the bay – there’s a fishing pier not even 5 minutes from the house.  The concern there is flooding issues based on how close to the water we are, but I’ll obviously get more information from the neighbors before even considering putting in an offer.

The pictures online are never 100% telling on how a house really is. The one thing realtors really don’t do for pre-owned homes is provide some type of a drawing for the floor plan.  The biggest gripe I have with that, if you can’t provide the drawing that’s fine but could you at least freaking give us the dimensions of the rooms?  We did a walk through of one house that was listed as 1600sqft with a ‘master suite’ that I couldn’t even fit a god damn twin sized bed into, let alone my king sized.  They should have put less effort into making the bathroom as big as it was, and pop out the wall so you could fit a freaking bed in there.

Based on the photos, however, it looks to be a similar floor plan to a house that Sean and I already did the walk-thru on.  We didn’t like the community, or the community rules, so we just let it go.  If it’s the same floor plan then I can pretty much get a feel for things.  There’s a lot of windows for natural light, I do know that the AC unit would probably need to be replaced, the damn thing looks ancient, and there’s two big propane tanks off the back of the house for the forced air heat and the gas fire place in the family room (which is actually nicely surrounded by stone).

Regardless of it needing work, I know that we’d have at least the rest of our lives to make it work so it’ll definitely be worth looking into.

I’m starting to get a little excited again…

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Possibly looking up…

Wednesday, October 30th, 2013

So I got a phone call from the realtor today.  She noted that she had absolutely no idea that 21st Mortgage had blacklisted ELS properties.  She was furious, she’d been recommending this company to just about everyone for the past few years.  She threw out their business cards, and gave a few other companies a call for us.  One of them, First Credit Corp, has no bad dealings with ELS and she spoke to one of the main reps, he said that based on the situation he would do everything he possibly could to get us into this house by the initial closing date of November 22nd.

After Sean spoke with him, and I spoke with the realtor about a few things, we went ahead and submitted our application and forwarded over every bit of tax/income information that they could possibly need from us just to get the ball rolling and get everything taken care of as soon as possible, this way no matter what actually happens there is no ‘waiting’ period on our end.  The broker advised us that he will be able to get us a definite YES or NO by tomorrow afternoon.  So we’re back to the waiting game, but at least this time we’re dealing with a company who can actually handle the loan.

I’m still super pissed off at the previous company, but at the same time the broker AND his boss had no idea that this situation was even going on.  I know the realtor was very apologetic, and even the broker knows damn well that his company screwed up on this one, being as all of our information checks out.  I just don’t like being told “We’ll give you whatever money you need to get into a house, and I’ll even fast track any changes to address, but you can’t buy this one”.  It upsets me, and while I know this isn’t our dream home and we’re probably better off looking for something on our own land instead of a co-op/leased land, but that still doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to take the plunge and just get into our own place.

After talking to the realtor today, I wasn’t surprised to hear that even the owner of the home was pissed off too.  I really believe it’s the reason why so many homes are remaining at the “For Sale” status around here, six complexes in this area are ELS properties, and they seem to be the only ones around here that actually have good looking houses for sale. Everything else that I’ve looked at, outside of ELS but in the Rehoboth area were older homes that required a lot of work and time that Sean and I just don’t have.  On average it’s 70 hour weeks, there’s no way in hell we could factor in household maintenance on top of that.

So we’ll see what happens, hopefully tomorrow will wind up being really good news for us.  At this point we’re gonna basically say that if it doesn’t work out – we’re not going to bother to pursue it.  I really hope that isn’t the case, I really want this damn house.

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It WAS going well…

Thursday, October 17th, 2013

Last Friday Sean, Karen and I took a walk through the house we’re interested in.  The house is cute, it does need some cosmetic work but the inspection (done a month ago by the same company we were going to hire anyway) looked good, the house was fairly clean and even though there was new carpet in only three of the five rooms – that isn’t a total deal breaker for us since we didn’t want to even have carpet in our office space anyway to cut down on Sean’s allergies.  There was some previous interest in the house this summer but they couldn’t get the financing together. We’re lucky enough to have Sean’s dad willing to both co-sign and loan us whatever we need to get us into the house. We’re taking his money as a personal loan to cut down on the overall amount of revolving credit that we currently have. So we’ll pay him back monthly and just roll it into the monthly bills but we won’t be bound by a bank to have it paid back in 5 years like a standard personal loan.

There’s two massive decks on the house (front and back), I can always appreciate a large front porch because I’ve always wanted to have a nice little bench with two chairs and even a coffee table, and if I really wanted to I could put a fan on the ceiling to keep airflow moving around.  The front of the house is actually in a spot where it really doesn’t get much sunlight other than first thing in the morning, which is good for Sean and I because we really don’t go to sleep until the sun’s about to come up anyway.  The room that we would turn into an office is one of the rooms where the carpeting wasn’t replaced, so we’re gonna probably put down some type of laminate (whether it be wood or peal and stick at this point doesn’t matter).  We do have an area rug that Lucy had given to me prior to her passing away, this is something I clearly want to bring into the new house so that’ll go down on the floor to keep it from getting destroyed by the wheels of our chairs.  Off of this room, there aren’t any windows but that’s because they got rid of the windows and put in a pretty massive french door so it not only lets in A LOT of light, but there’s the ability for a nice breeze as well.  These doors lead to the fairly decent sized back porch as well.  The porch itself is closed in so there’s tons of privacy and it’s large enough I can get a nice dining table out there and even enough room for a barbecue and maybe some type of an herb garden or something.  Possibilities are pretty much endless.

Now, I’m not overly thrilled about walking through a bedroom with raw meat if I’m cooking outside, but the laundry room leads to the side door of the house that also connects to this deck, so I can always cut through there and not have to worry about it.  The laundry room does need a little work though. I feel like there is some type of structuring issue because the floor seems very…. soft. And not the “Ooh fresh carpet” type of soft, the “I’m afraid if I turn on the washing machine it’s gonna fall through the floor” type of soft.  There’s an indoor/outdoor carpet in there now. That’ll be the first thing to go. I don’t like the idea of carpeting anywhere near a washing machine.  One leak and the house will reek of mold for an eternity.  The soft floor though…now, this is an easy fix for me. It’s just the matter of getting into the crawl-space, putting fresh insulation up where it’s currently hanging down (per the inspection report) and then put up a new cross beam to just add to the support.  Sean and I already know that in the future we’re replacing the washer/dryer because they’re very small units and fat people don’t own small ANYTHING.  So clearly we need something with larger capacity, the current ones wouldn’t even pass as apartment sized. I feel like a bucket with an agitator would give me more room for clothing than the current washing machine.  But anyway, after that beam has been replaced I’m gonna take up the carpeting, and then put a new sub-floor in and then we should be fine for all of the support that we could possibly need.

The master bedroom is a fairly decent size (13×12).  This doesn’t include the closet area that leads to the ‘master bath’, so basically I have 13×12 to accommodate the king sized bed and a dresser.  I think, considering we’re in a 10×12 now with more furniture… we should be fine.  My desk would no longer be in the bedroom since Sean and I are going to share an office, clearly there won’t be an entertainment unit because that will be shifted to the living room, and the small dresser that we do have in here is coming with us, but will fit perfectly in the room and we don’t have to worry about any space issues at all.  The pass through is his/hers double mirrored door closets, and then it leads to the 3/4 bath that they claim is a ‘master bathroom’.  To me it’s not a ‘master’ unless there’s some type of a tub but there isn’t enough room for it and there is a tub in the hallway if I really wanted to soak in something that bad.  I’m more of a shower person anyway so it’s not really a deal breaker.

The third bedroom will be utilized as a guest bedroom, but a portion of the closet will be for linens as there is no hallway closet to accommodate that.  I do want to get some type of a chest for the end of the King bed so that I can utilize it for both linens and easy access for the dog. She’s got the doggy steps but because they’re shorter than the mattress she winds up getting stuck on the stairs and can’t complete the jump up.  I figure if I get some type of a bench she can still get all way the way up the stairs and then have the clearance to reposition herself so she can get up into the bed. I may wind up having to switch out the stairs for a ramp though, she’s getting older now so it’s harder for her to get around these days. She’ll be 10 in February, and it really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long but now I need to consider her a senior. So obviously a few areas of the house will need to be more pet friendly because she can no longer leap up and down anymore. Clearly I’m starting with the bedroom for that one, she spends the bulk of her day on the floor anyway.

The kitchen in the house is pretty decent, it’s small but there’s a decent sized island on one side that contains the sink and a ‘bar’ type of area. This does increase the counter space, not by very much, but when considering it’s just the two of us and I usually clean things up while I’m cooking there’s really no cause for concern there.  There are more than enough cabinets though, I don’t like the idea of having kitchens overflowing with crap that you’ll never use, and I’m also not a big fan of having things in the kitchen that don’t belong there. So organization will be a BIG deal for me with this house, considering we’re limited on storage so of course I’ve been locating numerous different storage solutions in both magazines and online.  This isn’t the exact one that I found, but it’s similar.

headboard

I can’t even find the magazine that I found the original image in, but it’s the same general idea. Have two bookshelves that are connected with crown molding, insert some lighting and then still have the night-stand. This way it then makes it look as though the entire headboard is built straight into the wall.

The way I wanted to modify it though, I’ve always wanted to create a tufted headboard, to kind of make things just POP. I think once we decide upon a color scheme I could get away with making it. I saw numerous DIY shows that take like a 12″x12″ square of plywood, add some batting and then put fabric on top of it with a button or some type of funky design on it. What I want to do is take the center section of this book case idea and then have it lined with strips of velcro, this way I can just velcro the boxes on in any formation I choose and it makes it even easier to switch them out if I ever wanted to update the bedroom seasonally, in the long run it’s less time consuming than repainting the walls, and if I do a few different shades of the same color I could come up with something unique whenever I just feel like shifting things around.

Now, I’m in no way remotely interested in these colors, but this is the general idea.

queen-headboard-teal-twill

You can see the different blocks, I would do different shades of the same color. From there I’d make sure to carry it up high enough but not so high that it effects any type of lighting I choose to work into it.

Obviously something like this would be a long project, but it would increase storage in the master bedroom on top of visual appeal so the room doesn’t feel so plain.

I’m going with a very neutral color pallet throughout the whole house, the ‘pops of color’ will primarily come from accessories/paintings. I do not like the idea of accent walls, I do not like dark tones on the walls either. I want things to be as simple and clean line as humanly possible. Also knowing that this is just a starter home for us, I don’t want to go crazy on the colors so that it’s something we need to worry about in the future. As clean/light as possible without being some sterile hospital white either.

So yea… at this moment we’re just waiting on the Broker to get back to us about our loan application.  We haven’t heard from him since Tuesday which is something that’s even concerning to the realtor because he’s very good about returning all of his phone calls, and even right now his voice mail is full. She noted that she’s concerned since she commonly talks to him multiple times a day and even she hasn’t heard from him.

We just want to know how much money we can actually afford, put in our offer and go from there.  There’s no way in hell these people are getting their asking price, that’s for damn sure – and that’s just based on the structural and cosmetic work going on on the OUTSIDE of the home, this doesn’t even include the fact that we have to replace flooring (even though their insurance company paid for the flooring to be replaced after the pipe blew over the winter since the water company failed to shut off the water to the home as they were requested). So clearly since the Insurance company paid for new drywall and flooring, they could have gotten the remaining $300 together to get the other two rooms finished with the same carpet. BUT it’s cosmetic, and not a deal breaker for me since we’re swapping it out for laminate anyway.

I’m gonna go sit with the phone and just patiently freaking wait for SOMEONE to say something to me.

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Keepin’ it movin…

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

Even though I have these overwhelming moments of “I haven’t gotten a damn thing done…” I’m still movin, movin, movin. I’m cranking things out as fast as I can, and bouncing from site to site and email to email on a regular basis. I still don’t feel like I’ve actually fulfilled anything I set out to do though. Clearly I’m accomplishing something being as all of the bills are paid and there’s still money left to do what I please… it just doesn’t seem like it’s enough anymore.

I’ve been exhausted lately, it doesn’t matter how much I actually sleep – I just never feel like it was a restful one. I don’t know if it’s the change in weather (constant Hot to Cold extremes) or the fact that the sun hasn’t come out in a few days but my eyelids are insistent on just closing completely and forgetting about the tasks at hand right now.

I’m completely 100% overbooked, the workload has got me shaking in my fuzzy slippers and there’s all kinds of pressure from every direction to just get it done where quality and speed are heavily utilized.  For just one client there’s 4 major sites to work on, each bigger than the last and of course there’s tight deadlines on every single one of them.  With another client, she was MIA for the past year and a half and all of a sudden I’m now supposed to RUSH to cater to her because she’s finally on the ball.  She still owes me like $2,500 from the last chunk of work done for her, but swears she’ll have everything paid in full upon completion. I just wish that “End” was closer.  I did just finish up on Adam’s halloween site – Oct31st.org.  I wish it could have been completed sooner, but with everything going on and the fact that I’m over-scheduled, it really took my time away from it. I feel bad for the delays, but there’s nothing I could have done about it.

Right now I’m looking down at my Thunderbird icon on the dock and it’s showing over 135 emails. Knowing that I already did the usual daily spam clean-out, I’m scared to see the requests I have waiting for me.  I need to put in about 8 hours to complete one site today, and then there’s another site that should take me about 15-20 hours that needs be done by Saturday – I just hope I have the strength to get it all done.  In theory it’s just 3 8-hour days and everything is fine, but when you’ve got other things to take care of as well, those 8 hours turn into 16 and then your brain fries and it’s time to crash.  There isn’t enough coffee to keep my eyelids open anymore.

Excitement Note:  We’re looking to buy a house!
Tomorrow (Friday 11th) is going to be beyond hectic, I’ll be on the phone all morning to get appointments setup, and get some banking needs taken care of and then at 2pm I have an appointment with a realtor to do a walk-thru on a house that I’ve been eyeing for a little while that only recently (like three days ago – recently) went back on the market.  Sean and I went to TD Bank to try to get a mortgage on our own, but since it’s a manufactured home and not on it’s own land TD didn’t approve us for the mortgage. The lady was very surprised that the pre-approval didn’t come right up considering she saw our proof of income and said “If someone who’s making $30,000 every 5 months can’t get a mortgage – something’s seriously wrong with our systems!”  So we’ll get that “This is why you weren’t approved” letter in the mail in a few weeks, in the meantime I called around to numerous banks in the area to find out who actually would provide the funding on a pre-fab home, and I found ONE bank, out of fucking 12!!  Since I just took an 11 point hit on my credit for even applying for a loan (which is something TD should figure out how to reinstate since they should properly train their employees prior to them completing an entire application knowing that this house isn’t on its own land), I now am well into the “Poor” rating for credit scores.  Sean took the same 11 point hit on his credit, but his was in the higher 690’s, so he still falls under the “You’re OK” mark.  His father, very graciously, has offered to co-sign for Sean, and since his score is in the high 800’s, there should be absolutely no doubt that the loan will be approved.  He recently sold a house, and when they ask about ‘savings accounts’ he can say that he’s got a few hundred grand in his, and even though Sean doesn’t have anything in his – I’m sure the numbers will balance out.

Now the rush is that we’re trying to bring as much money together as we possibly can.  Between closing costs, downpayment, and the initial “Get it all hooked up and turned on so we can LIVE in the house” aspect of things – we’re gonna need about 15 grand.  We’ve only got 3700 right now, so needless to say the next two months are going to be a hectic dance of “Work, Deal with Broker, Work more… keep working, working, working, working and working!”.

I’m just crossing my fingers that we can actually accomplish it.  We’ve spent so long living under someone else’s roof during the entire length of our relationship (to date) that it’s time to just start the next chapter. It’s a jump that we absolutely need to take, we’re both scared about it (obviously) but we’re going to do it together and no matter what happens we’ll always have each other to lean on.

In any event… time to get back to work. :: head desk ::

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It was.. my dream home.

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

So yesterday we looked at the house. The realtor was right, it does show nicely. From what we saw, there are anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 worth of things that need to be done on top of the initial purchase price of the home. It’s primarily cosmetic, there’s a few cracks in the ceiling from the house settling, and some issues with having to remove a lot of tacky wallpaper, possibly purchase a new water heater, and almost definitely purchase an AC/Heat unit being as I was unable to locate one on the parameter of the house. It’s 2500 square feet, and the rooms in it are beyond huge, with this we’d need some kind of a high powered air unit to make sure each room is properly heated/cooled during the course of the year. I see that costing somewhere in the $3,000 range. While the carpets LOOK clean, the previous owner had pets and there’s a few very dark spots throughout the house so I would personally prefer to just remove them all together and have new ones put down. This would be after all of the wallpaper was removed from the walls, everything was painted and fixtures around the house that were missing would be purchased. The remainder of the money would be to furnish the home, obviously you can’t live someplace with nothing.

The setup of the house is as follows:

Living Room – When entering the house there’s a small living room, large enough for maybe an L-shape couch and a TV, possibly coffee table – nothing extreme. There’s a large gas fireplace in the living room as well, and a large 3-window picture window for plenty of light.

Master Bedroom – Right off of the living room is the master bathroom to complete the ‘split floor-plan living’. The room itself is 13×18. However, the walk-in closet it 10×10 – this would instantly void the need for us to have excess dressers/bookcases in the room. The closet houses pull down access #1 to the storage space above. We could honestly get away with one dresser and maybe a small entertainment unit for the TV, that doubles as storage for under garments and what not. Per the realtor, the closet could be used as a nursery in the future based solely on the size. I personally wouldn’t want the baby sleeping in the closet so that’s a hell no right there, heh. The bathroom has a nice size soaking tub, double sinks and a decent size glass-sliding door shower with two sections for shelving.

First Bedroom and Second Bedroom – There’s a blue room (first bedroom) off of the living room at the beginning of the hallway that’s 13×11. We originally were going to use this as either Sean’s office or Mine, however the room next to it is much larger and can be utilized as a very large office for the two of us. The first and second rooms are merged together with a Jack & Jill bathroom. It’s a decent sized bathroom to be utilized as the private bath for the two rooms, basic shower, toilet and sink area with some storage underneath. The two bedrooms offer decent sized closets for storage/clothing as well. The second bedroom, however, is a whopping 13×21. I shit you not when I say this room is HUGE, go measure a 13×21 area and tell me it’s not big? I could park my freaking truck in there and still have room for two desks and a couch!

Bathroom #3 & Laundry – Off of the very large room all the way at the end of the hall there’s a relatively small ‘public’ bathroom which is at the back end of the original structure of the home. Very basic , but obviously was an external wall because there’s a cut-out for a window that used to look to the outside. It’s a basic room, not much to talk about – directly across is a nice sized laundry room that has a pull down access point for the storage space. It’s not a stand-up attic on this end either, it’s a good height for boxes but the realtor noted she’s never personally gone up there being as there’s currently no electric in the home and she didn’t want to bump her head with no lights. (perfectly understandable). Either way these two rooms were the original “end point” of the home, however they’ve added extensions.

Den / Garage / In-Law Suite – A decent sized den with a gas fireplace, this would be utilized as “Lep’s Lair” as I’ve been calling it. More of a media/game room than a living room, this way if he’s playing games at night, I’ll be on the other side of the house in the master bedroom and it wouldn’t really bother me. This has a lead-out sliding door to the backyard. Off of the den there’s access to the two car garage, which shares access to the In-Law suite that was also built in this 3-part extension. The in-law suite offers a small kitchen, stack-able washer/dryer, and a private full bath. The room itself is about 13×15 so it’s relatively small but could be used as a small studio apartment if we ever chose to rent it out in the future.

Kitchen / Dining Room – These were the two that really blew my mind.  The kitchen is HUGE, and houses a nice corner wood burning fireplace, above it has a small cabinet to hide the TV (the hookups are already there).  There’s a large fridge,  nice stove, dishwasher, plenty of storage, and even room for a nice eat-in area.  From there there’s also a lead off into the backyard.  Moving forward (in the direction of the living room), there’s a nice sized dining room, it could fit a 10 person table and a hutch and there’s another lead off to the backyard.

Backyard – The yard is the size of the house, at least.  More than half of the yard is the in-ground pool and while its a little dirty, it could be absolutely gorgeous when cleaned out.  There’s also a small ‘pond’ area that has a pump and lights but since the power is off its just freestanding water filled with frogs.  There’s a separate small area that’s fenced off for the in-law suite so they have a private yard as well.  Every aspect of the fenced area is cement block so it doesn’t require any maintenance whatsoever. On the outside of the fence towards the side of the house there’s a lot of grassy area that includes a decent sized shed, it would require some clean-out work but its a decent enough size where we could extend the existing fence and give Bella, or any other dog we get room to play in the grass. There aren’t many trees in the backyard, so there’s A LOT of sunlight for tanning and enjoying the backyard in general.

Front – The front of the house has a large wrap around drive-way.  The side has a 6 car driveway past the two car garage. There’s a small island with some shrubbery and a nice sized porch on the front of the house that I can utilize as my usual relaxing area for a cig or even just relaxing outside for the fresh air.

All in all I would personally LOVE to own the home, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a home and even exceeds my expectations of everything.  Unfortunately it’s just not within our grasp right now as we’re already $30k in debt, we need to get another $10k on top of that to get the closing costs, PLUS we would need a co-signer to even get the loan.  The next few months (if this house is even still on the market) will require us to work our asses off to bring as much money in as possible to get our debts paid down. I look at it this way.  If the house is still available when we actually are able to do this, it was meant to be.  If not? It was something to walk into where we would know what our expectations are, and where we know we wish to be.

I guess, at this point, the future will tell.

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House Hunting Begins

Monday, October 24th, 2011

Sean and I (plus Karen!) are seeing a house tomorrow. We’ve been looking at it for a little while now and finally got ourselves hooked up with a realtor and made the appointment to take a look from the inside. The over-head views and photos listed online have sparked our interest enough to want to walk inside. There’s a pretty big in-ground pool so that’s a major plus for us – we’re like fish in the summer time if there’s a pool around! There’s also a MASSIVE kitchen that offers tons of storage and natural light. I’m excited to get in there to look around. It’s four bedrooms, four bathrooms PLUS an in-law suite, so if we actually do purchase the home, we’ll have someplace to stick people when they come to visit so they can have some privacy as well.

The biggest issue for me is leaving everything in NY. My entire family and all of my friends are there. One of which is kind of giving a guilt trip cause we’re coming down here and not looking in NY. The reason being – TAXES. The property taxes for a home on Long Island are in the $10,000 a year range. This is ON TOP of the $3,000 a month it would cost to OWN the home itself, so we’re looking at about $3,700 a month in outgoing bills. Where as down here, the taxes are in the $1,000 range. This is the more financially sound option for us because it would bring our monthly payments into the $2,300 range, which means between the two of us we have to make $1,500 a month in order to not only pay all of the bills, but general house maintenance as well.

What we’re looking for, as far as a mortgage is concerned, is the ability to ask for about $30,00 more than the cost of the home. We’d utilize this extra money to pay off all of our other debts so we can then bring our ‘outgoing bills’ payment to the same amount without having to worry about whether or not its going to be the car payment or the mortgage payment.

We’re jumping into this, we know this full well. It would be more financially sound for us to try to pay off more of the bills before we even consider a home, but when you just have that feeling that everything is going to be alright… you act on it. It’s the same thing I did when I left my stupid office job. As soon as my notice went in, work came spewing out of the woodwork. And since we’ve been in DE? We haven’t really been able to breath because of the workflow. If this is the sign that everything is going to be OK, then I’ll take it – and run with it.

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A new kind of market…

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Sean and I have been in Delaware for almost a week now, over the course of the past week we’ve realized how carefree and relaxing it is down here, even though we’ve been working the entire time. (The joy of being a designer… you can work anywhere).  We’ve weighed our pros and cons and realized that living in an apartment in NY would not permit us to build up a savings account, where as purchasing a home in DE would.  How did we figure this? Simple math really.

In order for us to have an apartment in NY (even in Suffolk County – eastern end of Long Island), we would need $1,800 a month before utilities. In order for us to purchase a home in DE, with the mortgage and utilities, it would only come to about $1,200.  The kicker would be that we would also be asking for a mortgage $20,000 above the cost of the home. Why? Because that’s how all of our credit card and loan debts would be paid off. Our outgoing bills would still be approximately $1,800 a month, but now instead of paying credit cards and a personal loan, we’d be paying a mortgage, utilities and the remainder of my auto loan on the truck.  PLUS, being as it’s only the two of us the food bill would drop down, the insurance rates would also drop down.  So while we’d be spending exactly what we’re shelling out now, we’d have more leway with the money and less stresses for the environment being as we’ll OWN the environment and can pretty much do whatever we please.

The help in all of this is the current rush of work coming through, we’re going to assess things and see if they’re still like this six months down the road, if we can maintain our current income (by either staying where we are, or increasing it) we’ll be able to own a home sometime within the next year which then gives us the ability to really start out our lives together.

I’ve taken a few drives through the southern section of DE because I really do love the communities and areas around there.  I also took a drive with Sean’s mom to do a little house hunting as well.  We’ve found two really nice homes in one community off of Route-9 in Lewes, DE. I honestly believe this is the area that I’d like to live in because of the dynamic and the fact that there was plenty of room for Bella to run around in the yard, and the home itself is 1600 sq. ft. which to me is perfect for two people and a 15lb animal.  It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, there’s a 3-season porch which would essentially be my office space, and we’d keep the third bedroom as a guestroom for anyone who comes by.  The home itself is very reasonably priced, there’s a community pool and a rather large pond surrounding one section of the complex that, to me, would mean a lot of excess bugs – but the screened in porch would counteract the problem.  My only gripe about the home itself is the lack of outdoor patio area, but that can easily be accomplished with the permit to attach one to the home.

Either way we’re only looking into things, this isn’t the only home I’m even considering but the community itself has caught my eye, and its distance from the beach helps me gravitate towards it even more.  I think there’s a mortgage in my near future…heh.

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