OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

As most of you may grok based on my posting history, the house I live in has been going all to heckies for better than a decade.

I have finally gotten my family to agree that we must move. What is more I have convinced them at long last that it will be more economically sensible to buy.
Between medical bills (paid!), general expenses, and the fact that I have been unable to do much paid work for the past 5 years it will be tough. We found a grant we are eligible for that will contribute to the down payment, and we qualify for a program at the bank, so it will be doable. Stupid medical bills were actually a saving grace. We pay for what we buy up front almost all the time, and do not take loans or own credit cards. So we do not have a credit history except for those medical bills. Being fiscally responsible has its downsides.

Now we just have to find the right house at the right price.

4 bedrooms, not in a city or village, and at least an acre of land. Lord knows I would like a bit more land, but much more than around 5 acres would probably be to big a tax burden. Of course everybody else has their wishes, I have been trying to get across the difference between what you want and what you need. For example I want the laundry hookups to be either in a laundry room or in the basement, at least not in the bathroom. I don't need that, it would just be more convenient.

Poor kiri does not know what to think. I was looking at online listings with the help of google earth and she discovered that there are houses where the mailbox is a five or ten minute walk from the front door. She seems to have had no idea that such a thing was possible.
Poor woman thought living in a city of less than 40K people was country living. LOL! She grew up and lived in Columbus Ohio, which is a very different sort of place, until she came to us.
I am just done with living in town. Given the choice I would take us back up the hill to where DH's people are from. Unfortunately that would put us in Pennsylvania. Now there is nothing wrong with Pennsylvania except that services for the disabled are poorly provided in rural areas, and we have Ash to think about. He is going to be 18 next month and in NY that gives him 3 more years of public school, plus we have a center that caters to the needs of the developmentally disabled in this county, so this county is where our search focus is going to be.
Besides, if we stay in NY DD3 can finish her college degree at a better school, and I can get those pesky 3 classes I need to finish mine, all for free. Yeah, I did the drop out cause I got pregnant thing THREE times. After DD3 I figured I had best wait a while to go back because college seemed to be a fertility charm.
Now I don't have to worry about it. :D

NightMist

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

"Night Mist" wrote in message
...

Dear Night, sure hope you will be able to get things just the way you want
them to be! Or at least the way that will be acceptable! The best of
luck!
Barbara in SC

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Oh, Nightmist, I hope you have great luck in finding what will fit your life! I have usually done a list of "these things I will not budge on", then a list of "these things are negotiable", and a third list of "just do not want these things". And then realize it is all negotiable ;))

Keep your sanity and peaceful feelings during it all, and please keep us updated!

Ginger in CA
[real email is ]


On Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 9:12:12 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
As most of you may grok based on my posting history, the house I live in has been going all to heckies for better than a decade.

I have finally gotten my family to agree that we must move. What is more I have convinced them at long last that it will be more economically sensible to buy.

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Hello Night Mist,
This move sounds like it is well thought out. What you want and don't want. There are always things I had to put up with that seems to go with every house. If you get 95% even it would be great. Having an acre sounds wonderful, so hope you can put in a nice garden. Good luck on your house hunting.
Sandy$

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

After scouring the listings and contemplating and discarding a number of foreclosures, we are going out to look at a house.
Those foreclosures are tempting, but after viewing the specs, it seems that there is always a potentially (or genuinely) catastrophic problem with them.

The place we are going to look at is practically perfect on paper. So now we have to go look and see what is actually wrong with it that you don't see looking at the outside. Outside it has a couple of things wrong that are actually pretty minor.

I had looked at the listing, considered and discarded this place previously. It was too good to be true and the taxes listed were low enough I thought it had to be wrong.
Come to find out it is an irregular lot and most of the land is not even cleared. With only two acres roadside, the taxes are legitimately quite low.
Still, a 4 bedroom house with a four horse stable, on 23 acres, 20 minutes out of town, with low taxes, and less than $10k over the list price range we were looking at, there has to be something wrong with it.
DH says that maybe the universe has just decided to be kind to us.

We shall see.

NightMist

PS the laundry hookups are in the bathroom

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?

Ginger in CA
[email to respond is ]


On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 6:10:00 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
After scouring the listings and contemplating and discarding a number of foreclosures, we are going out to look at a house.
Those foreclosures are tempting, but after viewing the specs, it seems that there is always a potentially (or genuinely) catastrophic problem with them.

The place we are going to look at is practically perfect on paper. So now we have to go look and see what is actually wrong with it that you don't see looking at the outside. Outside it has a couple of things wrong that are actually pretty minor.

I had looked at the listing, considered and discarded this place previously. It was too good to be true and the taxes listed were low enough I thought it had to be wrong.
Come to find out it is an irregular lot and most of the land is not even cleared. With only two acres roadside, the taxes are legitimately quite low.
Still, a 4 bedroom house with a four horse stable, on 23 acres, 20 minutes out of town, with low taxes, and less than $10k over the list price range we were looking at, there has to be something wrong with it.
DH says that maybe the universe has just decided to be kind to us.

We shall see.

NightMist

PS the laundry hookups are in the bathroom

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place.. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

We have been looking, discarding wet basements, dubious roofs, hodge podge electrical wiring and etc.

Found one place that was a little small but very nice indeed, except you could fit the bathroom in a teaspoon and the 4 bedrooms were on the second floor with an open floor plan. An open floor plan for the bedrooms?! We might be a little kinky, but even we were all saying Who does that! The place was more or less a hunting lodge for rich weirdos. Getting out there was an experience. I was going to print out a map, but DH and kiri were insistent that we didn't need to because she has GPS on her phone. You all might recall how impressed I am by GPS. So we went up the road and over the hill and then we ran out of pavement and were on gravel. kiri was mightily unimpressed by that. we turned up another hill and went a few more miles and the gravel road gave way to dirt, and kiri stated to growl. After anther 5 miles the phone said your have now reached your destination and lost signal. We had not reached our destination, and kiri pulled over as best she could since the road was down to one lane, and let the estate agent pull up along side. He had never been to the place either, and took the lead. after another half mile or so we found the place. With a repeal the SAFE act sign out front and a This Property is Protected by a Gun sign in the front window. The only other domiciles we had seen since the road became dirt were log cabins and rusty trailers. When we got up to the front porch we found iron bars on the front windows. I was feeling pretty comfortable because I was out in the woods and back among my people of origin, then I remembered that my people of origin were pretty much a**holes. Even today my siblings lean to the paranoid gun nut lifestyle. I had a brief flash of memory involving peeing in the woods and musket fire (my family were civil war reenactors). After we had determined that the bedroom floor plan was not acceptable, and kiri would likely strangle us in our sleep if we even gave the place passing consideration, we started home. Only instead of going back the way we had come kiri and the estate agent agreed that the lure of visible pavement 50 yards or so down the road was too tempting. We went thataway, came to a T and decided left seemed to be a likely direction. Wrong. So again we were going over hill and dale, and found ourselves headed into Pennsylvania. Then through part of the Alleghany forest, after about 45 minutes of driving the cellphones came back to life. It took us considerably longer to get home than it did to get there. It also left us with the question of why on earth were there three golf courses scattered across next to nowhere Pennsyltucky hard by an obscure corner of a state forest.

NightMist


On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 6:44:27 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Just Keep searching! The right place has got to be out there somewhere!
Barbara, now in Florida

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

I'm really trying not to laugh. Really. Except it is not working too well.

House hunting can be such an adventure. When my ex and I decided a general area where we wanted to look for some property, we located an agent. Gave a list of must-haves, and would-like-to-have. Oh, goodness, it was amazing what we looked at! Now, cluing you in that it was a 6 hour drive from where we lived, every month or so we would do a whirlwind trip up on a weekend [leave 0 dark thirty on a Saturday] to look at what was available.

Goodness, the descriptions on a flyer rarely matched the actual property! We never found the right-for-us one, although I found two that met my separate quilt/crafting area. Good thing. That divorce was final 10 years ago....

Ginger in CA
[real email is ]

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 9:34:01 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
We have been looking, discarding wet basements, dubious roofs, hodge podge electrical wiring and etc.

Found one place that was a little small but very nice indeed, except you could fit the bathroom in a teaspoon and the 4 bedrooms were on the second floor with an open floor plan. An open floor plan for the bedrooms?! We might be a little kinky, but even we were all saying Who does that! The place was more or less a hunting lodge for rich weirdos. Getting out there was an experience. I was going to print out a map, but DH and kiri were insistent that we didn't need to because she has GPS on her phone. You all might recall how impressed I am by GPS. So we went up the road and over the hill and then we ran out of pavement and were on gravel. kiri was mightily unimpressed by that. we turned up another hill and went a few more miles and the gravel road gave way to dirt, and kiri stated to growl. After anther 5 miles the phone said your have now reached your destination and lost signal. We had not reached our destination, and kiri pulled over as best she could since the road was down to one lane, and let the estate agent pull up along side. He had never been to the place either, and took the lead. after another half mile or so we found the place. With a repeal the SAFE act sign out front and a This Property is Protected by a Gun sign in the front window. The only other domiciles we had seen since the road became dirt were log cabins and rusty trailers. When we got up to the front porch we found iron bars on the front windows. I was feeling pretty comfortable because I was out in the woods and back among my people of origin, then I remembered that my people of origin were pretty much a**holes. Even today my siblings lean to the paranoid gun nut lifestyle. I had a brief flash of memory involving peeing in the woods and musket fire (my family were civil war reenactors). After we had determined that the bedroom floor plan was not acceptable, and kiri would likely strangle us in our sleep if we even gave the place passing consideration, we started home. Only instead of going back the way we had come kiri and the estate agent agreed that the lure of visible pavement 50 yards or so down the road was too tempting. We went thataway, came to a T and decided left seemed to be a likely direction. Wrong. So again we were going over hill and dale, and found ourselves headed into Pennsylvania. Then through part of the Alleghany forest, after about 45 minutes of driving the cellphones came back to life. It took us considerably longer to get home than it did to get there. It also left us with the question of why on earth were there three golf courses scattered across next to nowhere Pennsyltucky hard by an obscure corner of a state forest.

NightMist


On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 6:44:27 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

On the plus side, after this experience kiri has given up calling places 20 minutes out of town "Bum Frak Egypt", and now asks only that we look at places that will be plowed promptly in the case of a blizzard. I don't think she gets how variable the word promptly is in such cases, or that if we have such a storm that it can last for days.
I'm still trying to figure out why driving thirty miles in a big city is not the same as driving 30 miles outside of one. Down to Columbus she thinks nothing of driving half an hour or 45 minutes to get somewhere. Yet there is an awesome house (on paper) about 45 minutes from town that is big enough, has a monster garage, a small barn, a small guest house, a gas well, is on 5 acres surrounded by vineyards, and has affordable taxes, and she says it is too far away from town to even go look.
Maybe after this recent experience out in the wilds she will reconsider.

NightMist

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 10:32:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:
I'm really trying not to laugh. Really. Except it is not working too well..

House hunting can be such an adventure. When my ex and I decided a general area where we wanted to look for some property, we located an agent. Gave a list of must-haves, and would-like-to-have. Oh, goodness, it was amazing what we looked at! Now, cluing you in that it was a 6 hour drive from where we lived, every month or so we would do a whirlwind trip up on a weekend [leave 0 dark thirty on a Saturday] to look at what was available.

Goodness, the descriptions on a flyer rarely matched the actual property! We never found the right-for-us one, although I found two that met my separate quilt/crafting area. Good thing. That divorce was final 10 years ago.....

Ginger in CA
[real email is ]

On Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 9:34:01 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
We have been looking, discarding wet basements, dubious roofs, hodge podge electrical wiring and etc.

Found one place that was a little small but very nice indeed, except you could fit the bathroom in a teaspoon and the 4 bedrooms were on the second floor with an open floor plan. An open floor plan for the bedrooms?! We might be a little kinky, but even we were all saying Who does that! The place was more or less a hunting lodge for rich weirdos. Getting out there was an experience. I was going to print out a map, but DH and kiri were insistent that we didn't need to because she has GPS on her phone. You all might recall how impressed I am by GPS. So we went up the road and over the hill and then we ran out of pavement and were on gravel. kiri was mightily unimpressed by that. we turned up another hill and went a few more miles and the gravel road gave way to dirt, and kiri stated to growl. After anther 5 miles the phone said your have now reached your destination and lost signal. We had not reached our destination, and kiri pulled over as best she could since the road was down to one lane, and let the estate agent pull up along side. He had never been to the place either, and took the lead. after another half mile or so we found the place. With a repeal the SAFE act sign out front and a This Property is Protected by a Gun sign in the front window. The only other domiciles we had seen since the road became dirt were log cabins and rusty trailers. When we got up to the front porch we found iron bars on the front windows. I was feeling pretty comfortable because I was out in the woods and back among my people of origin, then I remembered that my people of origin were pretty much a**holes. Even today my siblings lean to the paranoid gun nut lifestyle. I had a brief flash of memory involving peeing in the woods and musket fire (my family were civil war reenactors). After we had determined that the bedroom floor plan was not acceptable, and kiri would likely strangle us in our sleep if we even gave the place passing consideration, we started home. Only instead of going back the way we had come kiri and the estate agent agreed that the lure of visible pavement 50 yards or so down the road was too tempting. We went thataway, came to a T and decided left seemed to be a likely direction. Wrong. So again we were going over hill and dale, and found ourselves headed into Pennsylvania. Then through part of the Alleghany forest, after about 45 minutes of driving the cellphones came back to life. It took us considerably longer to get home than it did to get there. It also left us with the question of why on earth were there three golf courses scattered across next to nowhere Pennsyltucky hard by an obscure corner of a state forest.

NightMist


On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 6:44:27 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Well, the search for the right-for-us property is always a challenge.
Don't get too stressed out by it all. Deep breaths!

From experience I can say that living in a house while remodeling it at the same time is not very fun.

Ginger in CA
[email is ]

On Friday, June 23, 2017 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 10:32:35 AM UTC-4, wrote:
oooh, keeping fingers and toes crossed that this is right for you!
New moon fortunes?


Well that was disappointing.

I had a tape measure with me and the listing flat out lied about room dimensions and total floor space.

The downstairs is OK, though the "Laminate wood flooring" turned out to be that thin self adhesive stuff you use to do a quick repair on cheap furniture. The bathroom is absolutely wonderful though.

The upstairs was an architectural nightmare.

At a guess? One of the owners who were a senior married couple (from published tax roles) became ill. We speculated this by the smell of the place. One of their children and their family moved back in to help out. We conjecture this by the description of an equestrian business that was running out of that address. We are guessing that this is when the stable was built and a couple of modifications done. One of those modifications was turning the upstairs into three bedrooms, in part by moving the stairs. To call the bedrooms cramped would be being generous. You literally could not fit a twin bed into one of them. They wallpapered the ceilings, and it it is falling off in a couple of spots. We think that originally the stairs had a landing and a turn, now they are a steep and narrow single flight with odd spacing, like who was meant to climb up and down them had legs that were not quite human normal. In changing the stairs they stranded the attic door mid wall about 4 feet away from the floor. Which is a pity because it is naught but a good big unfinished room at one end of the second floor. Why they didn't just put in some insulation, lay some flooring over the slab wood, and smack up some sheet rock is beyond me. I risked life and limb to get in to take a look and the room is even wired. Why go to considerably more work and expense to make a mess of the whole second floor when finishing one room would have done the job admirably?
DH suggested we lowball the place and see if they take it. My thought on that was well OK, but if they do take it where are we going to live while we fix it up enough that everyone has a place for their bed?

NightMist
still looking

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Well then, after looking at some horror shows, some foreclosures, and finding that there was darn little that came close to our requirements out of town, we huddled, decided, and made an offer on that first place we looked at.. The one with the mangled second floor. We are not wild about essential remodeling on a house we are living in, but it is structurally sound, dry, well insulated, and 23 acres. Thus several steps above anything else we have seen. Plus the mold issue in our current bathroom is making me sicker ever day and the DDs are totally freaking out about it.

So we offered, they didn't even counter, just said too low, we offered again, they came down $5K, my middle DD said offer $2K more and I will make up the difference. So we did that. They said we need at least $3K more, and I drew the line. We kept looking. 3 weeks along now and they called back and said OK we will take your offer.

So, earnest money has been given over, and the fussing about with papers and bankers and inspections and all commences. We are expected to finalize around the end of October.

DD3 says she is never doing this again _ever_. Unless the publishers Clearing house people come a knocking and hand her a check for a bajillion dollars and she is able to buy total awesomeness without fretting and fussing. I told her heck with that, if we suddenly and unexpectedly become rich, we will buy a piece of land and build a castle on top of The Hive (the Raccoon City Facility from Resident Evil movies and games). Or maybe just build The Hive and stick an old trailer on top. You only pay taxes on what they can see from the road after all.

NightMist

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Yeah!
Can you send me your address for a little giftee to head your way for the new house?

Use for email
Ginger in CA

On Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 8:37:34 AM UTC-7, Night Mist wrote:
Well then, after looking at some horror shows, some foreclosures, and finding that there was darn little that came close to our requirements out of town, we huddled, decided, and made an offer on that first place we looked at. The one with the mangled second floor. We are not wild about essential remodeling on a house we are living in, but it is structurally sound, dry, well insulated, and 23 acres. Thus several steps above anything else we have seen. Plus the mold issue in our current bathroom is making me sicker ever day and the DDs are totally freaking out about it.

So we offered, they didn't even counter, just said too low, we offered again, they came down $5K, my middle DD said offer $2K more and I will make up the difference. So we did that. They said we need at least $3K more, and I drew the line. We kept looking. 3 weeks along now and they called back and said OK we will take your offer.

So, earnest money has been given over, and the fussing about with papers and bankers and inspections and all commences. We are expected to finalize around the end of October.

DD3 says she is never doing this again _ever_. Unless the publishers Clearing house people come a knocking and hand her a check for a bajillion dollars and she is able to buy total awesomeness without fretting and fussing. I told her heck with that, if we suddenly and unexpectedly become rich, we will buy a piece of land and build a castle on top of The Hive (the Raccoon City Facility from Resident Evil movies and games). Or maybe just build The Hive and stick an old trailer on top. You only pay taxes on what they can see from the road after all.

NightMist

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

Well the assessment has been done, we've gotten the report, and in a number of ways it is a hoot! :D

The best example is she keeps referencing the place as "in the extremely rural township of".
OK, so it is 20 minutes to the nearest Starbucks via the expressway, but it is only 20 minutes and the on ramp is less than a mile from the house. Driving the regular roads it is less than 10 miles to town, and that is passing through one of the larger villages on the way. I don't imagine that she counts that the biggest organic herb farm in the county is an easy walk in one direction, and the biggest organic fruit farm is a slightly longer walk in the other.
I think the cats subtly exerted telepathic influence towards our decision because it is so close to their dealer. They really really enjoy the organic catnip from the herb farm.
Anyway, 10 miles from town is so _not_ extremely rural!
Lady is from Buffalo, so maybe the cows next door influenced her notion of rural.

Oh, and I spied a couple of alpacas in a field on the way out there. Gonna have to track down who owns them and find out if they are a hobby or part of a commercial enterprise.

NightMist
dazzled by the prospect of locally sourced alpaca

OT Finally! Actively house shopping
 

On Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 12:12:12 PM UTC-4, Night Mist wrote:
As most of you may grok based on my posting history, the house I live in has been going all to heckies for better than a decade.

I have finally gotten my family to agree that we must move. What is more I have convinced them at long last that it will be more economically sensible to buy.


We are progressing!

Since we did not have credit cards or loans or any such long term debt, we had no credit rating.
Therefor the bank has had to go seriously old school in writing this mortgage.
This has resulted in mass confusion among the underwriters for the last couple of months.
You would not believe how many times I have had to say, "Check the papers, you already have that." because they are dealing with a whole bunch of pdfs of scanned documentation. I had coffee with the vice president of our branch when he had to scan in around half a ream of papers we brought in for him. Then eventually he had to drive down to Pennsylvania to have words with the supervisor in charge to get them on track and to quit asking for things they would know they could not have if they had gone through the files as they were supposed to. We went through three different household members on the mortgage because they kept making assumptions without looking at the paperwork. They said put the person with the largest income on, we did that.
Then they had to take her off because she had no credit rating and was not on any of the bills. Then they wanted me on, because I am telephone woman and they talked to me the most. Then they discovered I was one bill shy of the number they wanted. Finally we got DH on it because he has that extra bill (because gas company policy was outdated and they wouldn't put it in my name without DH's "permission", and we couldn't get both of us there at the same time because somebody had to watch the kids. Yes that _still_ burns my butt!)

We have finally got everything situated to the mortgage underwriters satisfaction. Now we are waiting for that last letter that means the lawyers run with it for a bit (title search and all that), and then set the closing date.
Our consumer contact guy keeps saying how "unique" this mortgage is to write. I keep telling him, not unique, retro. This is how it was done 20-30 years ago, before it was considered "normal" to live with crazy amounts of debt. Maybe I am weird, but I really really hate debt of any kind, and work intently to pay off any that I fall into as quick as I can.

Yeah, I am having to adjust to the idea of having a couple three decades of debt. Buying a house is not something you can do out of pocket though, unless you are really really rich or have some pretty unusual circumstances going on. I just keep reminding myself of all the money we will actually save, and the freedom we will have to do what we want with the place.
The fact that we will be warm and dry this winter, and can make sure we stay that way every winter hence forward, also helps a lot with my attitude adjustment.

NightMist