Driving There

This past week has been busy. We verified that our realtor received the paperwork and earnest moneys. Thought it was strange to mail it to his out of town office rather than his local office. He said it was because the people that do the paperwork where at the out of town office but the main office was in our location. He did receive them and is going to hold onto the paperwork and check for as long as possible.

Sightseeing

This is our vacation time and we didn’t want to have to worry about finding a hotel that accepts dogs. Traveling with a dog means making tons of puppy bathroom breaks, so we are sending the pups to the kennel while we are gone. They were not thrilled about getting dropped of, but know we will be back. Plus they get to play with the human kids that live there which our little boy just loves. And lots of treats to snack on which our little girl just loves. So all in all, they will be fine.

After the pups were taken care of we got our house ready. We have terrific neighbors. All of us watch each others houses while any of us is away. Told our neighbors that we are going out of town and they will be keeping an eye on the place for us. And they know that everyone would do the same for them when they are out of town. So the house is all sealed up and we are ready to go. 

The car is all packed up and arranged so that if we need to spend the night in it, we can. Will be doing a bit of hotel and car camping. There are no reservations made ahead of time so that we are free to do what we want along the way. We took off to the open road and are so excited. It is so much fun to just drive on your own schedule and stop when you want to. When we see an interesting site, we just go for it. No schedule to keep. 

Thank goodness for smart phones. We have a couple of Droids through LetsTalk and the maps are terrific. They have only led us astray once, but the road signs pulled us back into position (after about an hour of wondering in the New Mexico Desert Aimlessly). Plus with the app from Hotels.com, we are getting great hotel rates along the way and have only car camped once so far. 

We should arrive tomorrow depending on how much sightseeing we do on the way.

Think we found a house.

Needs Paint

So after all of this looking, I think we may have found something.  We found a home that is a foreclosure at a decent price.  However, like most foreclosures it looks like it may need some work before it can be habitable.  The paint colors are outrageous.  Dark colors and nasty looking wall paper pealing everywhere, but the neighborhood is good with a terrific high school.  The yard needs some TLC, but if that is all we have to do, it’s a go.

We sent the realtor over to do a walk through.  He liked it.  However, he said the electrical panel would have to be replaced.  It seems to be the vintage that tends to cause fires due to lack of a proper fuse trip when there is a power overload.  There is also some rust spots in the downstairs bathtub that he felt his handy man could repair in a jiff.  The carpet was also dirty with suspicious spots but he felt his carpet guys could get them out no problem.  And if not, the carpets would need to be replaced.

And Paint

Ok, so we know we have a lot of cleaning and painting to do.  We would have to hire a sub-contractor to replace the electrical panel and our realtor can take care of that.  He also has a handyman that can help with some major work.  I can do the rest by myself as my husband won’t be able to take off work to do an extended rehab.  Can do the bath tub cleaning and minor touch ups and have a steam cleaner to clean the carpet. 

On paper and in the initial look over, everything looks good.  The house was just listed a few hours before we saw it and our realtor did his walk though the next day.  We want to be able to tie up the house so we told our realtor to do the paperwork to secure it.  We offered what the seller was asking as it seemed reasonable.  We e-mailed over all the paperwork and a copy of the earnest money check.  We have a contingency on the contract that we have 10 days to do a home inspection and get the loan in line.  This will allow us to walk away from the house for any reason in the next ten days and not loose any of our earnest money.  The earnest money check and paperwork with our original signatures was overnight shipped to our realtor.

And More Paint

After about 48 hours, we heard back from the seller.  They accepted our offer and we have the house tied up.  The house was officially on the market for 4 days.  Now we are packing the car for the 3 day trip out there to take a look at the house and get that home inspection done.  If all goes well, we give the go ahead to our mortgage broker and the house will be ours.  Let’s just hope it is as it seems.

Real Estate Sites

We are still searching. Every morning we spend an hour or two checking the web for that perfect house that meets our criteria. 

We kind of have this morning routine now. Get breakfast and coffee and head to the home office. 

We look over all of the latest listing and review any old ones that may have had some new information that may have had a change to their status. 

The first site we look at is Zillow. They seem to be the most up to date and are not restricted to just what is on the MLS. Then we check zipRealty, Trulia, and Hot Pads. We have a subscription of Home Path, but they advertise through Zillow and it’s easier to just get the information from there. Although Home Path does send regular alerts when there is a new house on the market. The other websites out there usually have what Zillow has, but occasionally one or the other might get a house a day or so sooner than Zillow. 

We looked at Home Exchange and HomeAway. Both are Great sites, but mostly for finding vacation homes and not so much for buying and selling. 

Thanks to the online world, we can now also check the local newspapers online for listings. So every morning, we are also checking those. 

 We tried the free 7-Day trials to Foreclosure.com and RealtyTrac . However, we have had some pretty horrible luck with both of them. It seems (or at least in the area we are looking) that the houses listed on Zillow for sale by these sites are just advertisements. Once you get an account with either one of them, the house you are looking for is not their listing or was sold years ago. Needless to say, we canceled both of the subscriptions well before the seven days was up. 

A friend of our recommended this book, but we haven’t had a chance to read it. We will have to put it in our future reading list, however, in the mean time our time and energy is being focused on the search. If anyone has had a chance to read it, let us know. 

Every time we find what looks like it could be a contender on paper, we go over every photos with as much magnification as we can to see if there is anything we can see. If it looks good to us, we send a note off to our realtor go does a virtual walk-though for us with us on the phone.  While on the phone with us, he is taking photos of all the good, bad, and ugliness. He hasn’t had to go out but once since we have such strict criteria. And we don’t call him unless there is a match.

In the mean time, still looking.

Still Looking.... and looking...

So we are still looking.  It's amazing to me how strange realtors can be.  I call a some of the homes and for many (not all) the first question is "are you a realtor or a buyer?"  Like it matters.  I usually tell them both.  Then they actually get grumpy about it.  One woman slammed the phone on me (literately) when I told her I was both a realtor and a buyer and had some questions about the well on her property if we where going to make an offer.  You would think she would at least be polite.  So the hunt continues.