Friday, October 29, 2010

Fun Weekend Ahead

Looking forward to what should be a fun weekend ahead. Hopefully babysitting my fiance's godson, moving the rest of our stuff to the new place, putting a deposit down for our wedding local, putting together two kick ass halloween costumes, then trying those costumes out at a friend's party. I'll try and remember to take lots of pictures. I'd really like to start taking more pictures. I bought a great film camera a while back and I haven't even finished up the second roll yet. I also have a digital though that I really need to use more often. Hope you all have an awesome weekend!

Monday, October 25, 2010

The culmination of Three Months of Waiting

Well, Thursday we finally got the all clear to close on the condo. I never thought it would happen. What with the bank dragging their feet like they were, and the seller being very antsy to sell. But, it did and here we are. Friday morning we did some running around to get everything set and ready for closing. We had to pick up a bank check and pick up a condo form. Then we went and signed all the closing paperwork, got our keys, and waited...they told us once the sale was on record we could move in. However, that meant we had to wait for the fire inspection at 2 that afternoon and then wait some more for them to call us. Luckily around 3:30 they called us. We went and got a UHaul, made some phone calls to friends, and started packing up. We headed out about 6:30 or 7 I think and the unpacking was ten times easier, I think the time helped, we had more people there to unpack us, including a friend that was easily carrying two and sometimes three boxes a trip, he even brought our tv in for us by himself, and that is not a light tv. Pizzas and beers were gotten and we reveled in the fact that we were homeowners. We returned the truck around midnight and fell exhausted into bed. It had been a long day of mostly waiting, surprise surprise.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The real hunt begins

Once we realized that condo's were really what we needed to focus on our search got easier. No longer were we looking at spending money to buy something that we would have to spend money on, aka, a money pit, love the movie, not so sure I like living in one. Instead we were looking at a mix of updated beautiful condo's in our price range and ugly, never been updated since they were built in the seventies, condo's that we would be able to play with as we pleased. Paint and some minor kitchen/bathroom improvements don't scare me, maybe because I work for a place that specializes in both. The scarier stuff is tearing down walls and putting new ones in their place. Condo's I realized were doable. We went out once with our new favorite realtor and came across a lot of nice ones, and some scary ones. After a few more days of looking we found one that my bub and I both agreed was something we wanted. The seller was asking $90,000 but seeing as how nothing in the area was going for anywhere near that, condo's at least. We decided on offering $75,000 with $4,000 back at closing. Needless to say they balked at that number. Suffice it to say, we walked away. On a sidenote they recently dropped the price of said condo....by $100. It's laughable really what some people think their homes are worth, but ah well. Luckily for us though we wound up finding another condo in the same complex asking exactly what we had offered the last seller. Upon a quick peek we immediatly knew we wanted to put an offer on this one as well. Sadly, our realtor was out of the state for vacation so we worked with a colleague of hers, who really only made us love our realtor all the more. We put an offer in on the condo on July 15th, then we went to Revere for their amazing sand castle competition. Thankfully, we received a phone call before we got back telling us our offer had been accepted. It wouldn't be long I thought before we'd be out of our tiny apartment and into our very own condo. It's now October 17th and we are still in our tiny apartment and still waiting, hoping, and though we aren't religious, praying for this condo to become ours sooner rather than later. But that's another story for another day.

The house hunt really begins

Once we had the real estate agent from heaven we really began our house hunting in stride. We looked at TONS of houses, or at least it felt that way. We both were trying to stay away from condo's, I think on my end I felt like buying a condo was just like buying an apartment and really was that a step up or just sideways? We found one huge beautiful old house that we fell in love with. It even had a closet inside a walk in closet, how cool is that? Sadly though, when I brought my parents to show them the house they talked some sense in to us. My dad said that even he wouldn't take on a project like the house, and my gram cried when my parents bought their house, it was that bad. So, we sadly walked away and began looking again. Our realtor realizing that we were wanting a house kept suggesting a nearby city for us to look at. However, neither one of us was really keen on that. And, eventually we both made peace with the idea that perhaps a condo was where we had to look.

Our Knight in Shining Armor

My fiance signed up to receive e-mails with houses in our price range in our area on a local real estate website. Here and there he saw things he liked and would e-mail them off to our realtor. Then our knight in shining armor came to our rescue. She was a realtor working for the company that was e-mailing my fiance. She asked him if what he was getting were things he was interested in or if she should tweek things as all and told him to let her know if she could help in any way. Well, we immediatly jumped and said "yes, please!" Our first meeting with her was amazing. She suggested we meet on Saturday morning at a local coffee place for drinks and a chat about what we wanted. From there she brought us, in her own car, to see some places we had sent her. Before with the old realtor we had always met her places and she had never met with us to see what our thoughts and needs were. This new way of thinking was a breath of fresh air. It was also a breath of fresh air that first day when her gps sent us a bit off track and she didn't seem fazed at all, she was more concerned with us and our finding a home than anything else. Though in hindsight part of this was also the fact that her husband and son were away for the summer, and so she had no one to worry about but herself. We were so glad we finally found someone we enjoyed working with and really worked for us.

Next Step Houses

So, after the mobile home issues we decided houses were the only way to go. This was also when we finally started working with a real estate agent. The woman we started working with wasn't quite to our liking. We felt rushed most of the time and we felt like we were always the one showing her houses we wanted to see and always thought it was supposed to be the other way around. She was giving us 15 minutes to view each house and seeing as how our price range was around the $100,000 mark most of the houses we were looking at were going to need repairs, and well, 15 minutes just isn't enough time to decide what those repairs might be and if it's worth a second look. Sometimes though that 15 minutes was plenty. Like for example the time we couldn't even get into the main part of the house but instead saw a section of the garage, or the house that was in the process of being re-done with no walls and barely floors in some rooms. We didn't really see any other way but luckily that would soon change.