Housing Update
I haven't had any time to update but because we may go under contract on a house today I figured now would be a good time to put off work for a few minutes and post.
We have had the most frustrating 6 months looking for houses in Naperville Wheaton and Lisle. We started in August and found that even with the price drops we could not afford what we would really like to buy. So we stopped looking.
Then we thought my company might lay off more people so we didn't start looking again until November when it became aparent that I would have clients to work with for 2010.
Then we found we could still not find a house in decent shape in our price range. We did want a 4 br house with a yard and we didn't want to have to remodel it from top to bottom or have it be almost as small as a 2br townhome. (you would be suprised what they call 4 br if its an older home).
So we waited again and watched the listings. We would go see a few houses every few weeks and not like what we saw. We saw a lot of old wood paneling glued to walls, a lot of really ugly colors of brick fireplaces and a lot of really old kitchens.
Then we found out that Steve's business is qualified as self employment even though he employs 2 other people because the profits and losses are on his taxes. And the last 2 years have been big loss years. (that is a story for another time) So, almost all the loan qualifying would be on me. How F-d up is that?
So we couldn't even qualify for much even with the down payment of $ from the sale of my condo and some of Steve's investments. (also we had the existing mortgage payments working against us since we knew we could not sell it while living in it and they only approve a 45% debt to income ratio total using your pretax income)
Then Steve's parents realized that the business would make this impossible so they gave us a huge gift of inheritance at the end of 09 and beginning of 2010 (max gifts per year without tax penalty made it impossible to do this in 1 yr and I think they still paid some penalty).
So with our new bigger down payment we did get requalified for a larger loan and figure a smaller monthly payment at the same time and might be closer to affording a pretty average Naperville 4 br house. Then the challenge was to find one that had a decent layout. With the recession nobody was selling that did not have to so most of the good houses were not for sale.
The housing surplus inventory had been cherry picked this past summer and only the really weird ones and ones that needed significant work were left. We were annoyed.
Finally after being ready to make an offer on a 2 story brick front georgian we had it scooped out from under us because the owner took it off the market after 1 yr. We contacted them and after all that they did not want to sell. WTF?
Steve's brother looked on redfin (our prefered real estate search site and iPhone app) and found a Cape Cod style house available just down the street from the Georgian house for sale. We liked it but it was 50K more. Yikes.
We saw it anyway and compared to the no-yard houses and the old moldy smelling houses with really bad jagged rock fireplaces from the 70's that needed to come down for safety reasons and thought this may be the only one we would really like.
The house has a 3 car garage which we never really were looking for but the space above the garage is genius, it is a long 20 ft room that is used as an office for 2 people. Wow.
It also has a normal layout with living room in front on the left, dining room in back on the left and the kitchen in the back middle of the house. The kitchen is attached to the family room on the right side of the back of the house and off the family room even more to the right is a small 3 season room that we probably won't use because it is behind the fireplace and not heated.
The family room has a vauted celing but it is the only one we have to waste heat on. We also have to get this kitchen refaced like the Warrenville townhome because it has really cheaply made 80's oak cabinets.
Upstairs it has 4 brs, one being the office and 2 really out dated 80's bathrooms, one with mirrors on all the walls. WTF? One also has a skylight that leaks. It also has dark wood trim instead of white, but its a cherry/maple syrup color so I will likley not paint it.
The dining room has an oak floor with a dark inlay in it as a border which looks cool. There is a small finished basement with wood paneling painted pink but at least its finished.
So, we offered 15% below the asking price on Sunday and went through the slowest bidding war ever as they tried to be totally rude and preserve as much capital as possible.
Only on the 6th bid when we said we were done, coming up to about 10% off the asking price did they drop 14K off the price and get serious despite us prioviding ample recent sales data for the neighborhood citing the prices we should be getting.
Today (Thursday) we have to make up a 3K difference and turn down their ugly blue velour 70's sectional couch they offered in the deal. We may close March 5th if we make a deal.
This has been the most frustrating time to buy a house and the most frustrating process sapping my energy from work, from our relationship and from my health. I just want it to be over, I have no respect for people who were taking the price down a couple thousand at a time in a recession with no other bidders even qualified for this size loan and no data to support their outlandish price.
I hope we will be ok for the 3-6 months it will take to sell Steve's place. We will be cash negative during that time but I will be advertising it like crazy as per usual. Luckilly the last updates of new windows and painting are nearly done. We will wait to do any renovations on the new house until the old one sells. We also don't have to show the old one with litter boxes and 3 cats in it.
Buying a house is not easy nor ever at a good time. We also found that there are FAR more FUGLY houses out there than we ever imagined! So many look cute outside and are horrible inside in SO many ways.
We saw showers and hot tubs in family rooms, closets not even in master bedrooms, master baths without a tub or shower, addtions that were sinking without foundations, walls that should not be there, lots of popcorn celings, bad oak woodwork, bad carpet, yellow and olive green toilets/sinks/tubs, gaudy red tile and basements full of spiders.
We also found that every house in DuPage County and likley Illinois has Radon. I was initially scared of the houses with the radon abatement systems (sucks the air out of basement and vents over the roof of house) but EVERY house in Naperville we looked at had one. And the map of Illinois is ALL medium-high levels of radioactive material in the soil so we get this heavy Radon gas evaporating out of it and getting into basements.
If you have a basement, get it tested, sealed and vented to avoid lung cancer. If you do that you're fine, otherwise you cant taste or smell or see anything that would be alarming.
So that is a synopsis of the process we've been though. Now we just have to sell one more place and refinish a lot of stuff in this new one and we can get back to a somewhat normal social life again. Oh yea, its 10 min from the Naperville train, so maybe my commute will be shorter too.