Another complicated chapter closes on 9.10.09
As stated in a this post Kate and I have been house hunting for a while. We’ve had some pretty rotten luck with the entire process and have learned that it is true; nothing goes really smooth and easily in life. Kate and I stayed strong, we were diligent and we refused to give up. Finally, after months of stress that I can only equate to mental hell I think everything has finally paid off for us. An abbreviated recap of the events follows.
After we lost the house as mentioned in the previous post Kate and I went back to a house we had looked at and placed an offer on previously. When we initially placed an order they countered us with a number that was above what we wanted to pay and knowing the work we needed to put into the home we were scared off. We went back and fell in love with the house again. It has a very nice layout, beautiful property, all the modern and luxury features you want and really great bones to be made what we want in a home. Unfortunately the kitchen was terribly small and we knew that in time we’d be forced to get involved in a major renovation project to build a new kitchen.
We were willing on doing this and made another offer which was accepted. While moving forwards with the process we learned that the house would require flood insurance due to its location. When we investigated flood insurance we learned it was in excess of $5,600 a year. Due to this ridiculous cost we opted to walk away from this house. Again we were saddened but we knew we were doing the right thing.
On July 8th we placed an offer on another home. After 7 weeks we have learned that indeed, third time’s the charm! Of course nothing is final yet as we haven’t closed yet but for the first time in this entire ordeal I feel confident enough to now share some of the story with the public. The events were very dramatic for us as it was a lot of time where we just had no idea or control of the situation.
We found this home, which is a lovely four bedroom ranch house with 2.5 bathrooms, a full walkout basement and sits on 1.15 acres of beautiful land. The house is much larger than we expected to be able to afford and comes with a lot more land than we ever thought we could own. We’re very excited and know this house has the bones to make an amazing home. The layout is great, the rooms are large, the kitchen is large enough and with some TLC everything will be amazing. The house was built in 1966 and unfortunately that shows in some areas such as horrible wood paneling that needs to be torn down and an outdated kitchen that we’ll need to upgrade to meet our style and usage.
We put an offer in on the house and the sellers came back pretty quickly with a very fair counter-offer we were willing on accepting. We quickly moved into Attorney Review and things seemed to be moving along nicely. Of course as soon as I feel something is moving nicely, going well or just perfect we must find bumps in the road. Sometimes, like in this case, they turned out to be hurdles.
We scheduled our home inspection and were expecting pretty smooth sailing as I had looked the house up and down and tried to identify issues myself but found nothing. This is probably because I have no idea about construction, plumbing, electrical or really any skilled craft. The home inspector was great and very detailed making certain to find everything he could that could pose a problem in the future for Kate and I. Boy did he find some problems.
The home inspection showed multiple major issues and a few minor issues. We made up a list of all the issues we had discovered and sent it off to our lawyer who made it all nice and legal like and sent it to them. I think it was well over a week before we heard anything back. Thankfully they had addressed some issues; but the major issues they just stated were still pending review.
After five plus weeks of continuing in this fashion we are now satisfied with the work done except for one moderately large concern of ours that they have however granted us a cash amount at closing so that we may address it on our own. Now we’re very excited to be moving into the new house and trying to get ourselves ready for the adventure ahead of us.
We’re nowhere near ready to move however and closing in just a bit over two weeks time! We don’t own a single packing box and unfortunately have still not sold our condo; which is a very sore subject for us. We’ve had a couple of offers that were too low for us to accept and both buyers have shied away from the purchase rather than accepting reasonable counter offers. We’re seeing a good amount of traffic but no bites. It’s nerve racking to say the least.
Originally posted at The WaxNation. Please leave any comments there. Posts on The WaxNation are written by either Kate or Dave Waxman; however livejournal can not display the author details thus to determine its author you must visit the original post.