Realty and Reality
It's the beginning of the weekend, and it's POURING! Tim and I were going to take a break from house hunting this weekend but of course there's a house on the market we have to go see, so Tim has an appointment with a Realtor for bright and early tomorrow morning. (I have acupuncture instead.)
Last week's search was exhausting. On Saturday morning (While I was doing my acupuncture session.) Tim found a short sale in our area. It has a lot of negatives, it's in a poor location right at the end of a T-intersection, and the lot is 1/2 the size of the lot we have now, the neighbors don't mow their lawns, and it still has its Christmas lights up. But it is "cheap" for California. Tim happily reports, it needs quite a bit of work... the fence at the back lot has fallen into the trailer park behind it, there is a dog living in the garage, the interior is dated and in need of help, etc. He looked at this before we met with the Realtor and was really excited about the possibility. I on the other hand had just gotten used to the idea of moving OUT of our area, not to a worse location in it! So we'll see what happens.
So after he got done touring the short sale, off we went to meet with a Realtor. In contrast, she showed us things around the top of our budget. We weren't familiar with the neighborhoods but they looked quite nice. Unfortunately the locations would be a bit of a commute for us. Almost all of the houses were staged and/or already remodeled, but we did find a few that had potential and needed work, but again since they were at the top of our budget the price didn't leave much room for remodeling funds. We liked some and are watching them, but don't think they'll come down as much as we would like them to. Plus very few had a lot as large as the one we're at now.
We looked at a few more houses on our own, and our hope of finding a house with a large lot in the lower range of our budget was restored. Amazingly we did! We even found one that had a lot of potential, and a decent commute. So we made an offer on it. Our first offer. If the 3% good faith deposit doesn't scare you off, the waiting might. In hindsight, if we ever make an offer again, we're giving a much shorter response timeline! The waiting almost killed us! As it was they let our offer expire. (Probably to wait for a higher offer, as ours was quite low, although very reasonable, due to the fact amongst other things the bathroom had to be completely re-done before it was usable! --water damage, leaking toilet, and missing tiles) We both liked the house, it was a decent size and had room in the garage for our cars, the lot had potential, and the commute would have been great, but onward and upward. I'll be curious to see what the house actually sells for.
--Update, Saturday, Jan 26th
Tim just left for the house tour. His last comment was--I'm glad it's raining so much, maybe the house will be flooded! That will be good for us.
He's hilarious.
Last week's search was exhausting. On Saturday morning (While I was doing my acupuncture session.) Tim found a short sale in our area. It has a lot of negatives, it's in a poor location right at the end of a T-intersection, and the lot is 1/2 the size of the lot we have now, the neighbors don't mow their lawns, and it still has its Christmas lights up. But it is "cheap" for California. Tim happily reports, it needs quite a bit of work... the fence at the back lot has fallen into the trailer park behind it, there is a dog living in the garage, the interior is dated and in need of help, etc. He looked at this before we met with the Realtor and was really excited about the possibility. I on the other hand had just gotten used to the idea of moving OUT of our area, not to a worse location in it! So we'll see what happens.
So after he got done touring the short sale, off we went to meet with a Realtor. In contrast, she showed us things around the top of our budget. We weren't familiar with the neighborhoods but they looked quite nice. Unfortunately the locations would be a bit of a commute for us. Almost all of the houses were staged and/or already remodeled, but we did find a few that had potential and needed work, but again since they were at the top of our budget the price didn't leave much room for remodeling funds. We liked some and are watching them, but don't think they'll come down as much as we would like them to. Plus very few had a lot as large as the one we're at now.
We looked at a few more houses on our own, and our hope of finding a house with a large lot in the lower range of our budget was restored. Amazingly we did! We even found one that had a lot of potential, and a decent commute. So we made an offer on it. Our first offer. If the 3% good faith deposit doesn't scare you off, the waiting might. In hindsight, if we ever make an offer again, we're giving a much shorter response timeline! The waiting almost killed us! As it was they let our offer expire. (Probably to wait for a higher offer, as ours was quite low, although very reasonable, due to the fact amongst other things the bathroom had to be completely re-done before it was usable! --water damage, leaking toilet, and missing tiles) We both liked the house, it was a decent size and had room in the garage for our cars, the lot had potential, and the commute would have been great, but onward and upward. I'll be curious to see what the house actually sells for.
--Update, Saturday, Jan 26th
Tim just left for the house tour. His last comment was--I'm glad it's raining so much, maybe the house will be flooded! That will be good for us.
He's hilarious.
posted by Susan at 8:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home