Made it back home last night in a reasonably timely fashion. Had a somewhat snowy drive from otterwort's to coffeerainbows's on Saturday. From there to home on Sunday had fine weather, however -- even the bit around Kzoo, about which I was far more stressed than necessary, was clear ( Read more... )

Just talked to the realtors about the possible house. The sellers are waffling about the price, as sellers tend to do. However, the market analysis came in about $20K higher than I'd be inclined to offer, and the sellers thought that was too low. Pretty much guaranteed that they wouldn't accept what I'd be willing to pay ( Read more... )

Saw a house yesterday that might be possible. Nice neighborhood, nice location, new siding & roof (I really don't want to deal with siding). Inside is in decent shape, just really "tired". Owner is going into some kind of assisted living, and daughter shows signs of just wanting to get rid of the place. It's not the level of scuzziness I had in ( Read more... )

Looked at a fistful of houses today. Nothing really suitable; three possibles, but all with less than ideal locations and/or odd layouts. The best of the three could be quite fun to work on, but I'm not entirely sanguine about its resellability, or that it would increase in price enough to be worthwhile ( Read more... )

It's pretty discouraging when even the realtor calls to check, "You're not driving all that way just for this, are you ( Read more... )

Realtor has been contacted. Property search commenceth.

So the business venture kicked off yesterday is another attempt at house-flipping, this time out in Wisconsin ( Read more... )

After much too much waffling, a decision: I'm going to walk away from the flip house ( Read more... )

"That's the thing about work, it's something you can throw yourself into and not worry any more."

"Ah. A bit like a combine harvester, then."

-Tom Holt, Falling Sideways
I've been distracting myself from real estate stress by plunking away at the more tedious of two small projects for the main home-business client. Good plan, yes? Well, I ( Read more... )

Seven counter-offers later... I got the house.

I wish I was happier about this. It's much too late in the year to be starting such a project. Even by my revised game-plan, I expected to be done by now. At this point, a rather large part of me wants to run screaming. But logically, it's still a good idea. Or at least, I don't have a better one ( Read more... )