House update
Mar. 31st, 2007 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vernardAfter the experience with the last folks that countered with a higher offer than the original offer, I decided to go and find another house that has less unknowns and with less obvious problems. So on the weekend on the 24th I took a look at 9 more houses.
A few of those houses were amazing horrible. The most horrific offenders looked like it had been used as an opium den and the folks had left post haste. The most impressive of them looked like someone was a long time client of said opium den and had every room decorated from a different pop culture period of the America. Including the hottub room. The disco ball in the kitchen is what *really* disturbted me though. But if you have 199K to purchase the place, another 10K to purchase new designs for it and another 60K to get them implemented, you would have a palace. Hellthe place even had a swimming pool. Of course the fact that is was literally next to a middle school was not a big selling point for me.
Anyway, the last two houses I looked at were near I-285 and Lawrenceville Hwy in the Montreal Woods subdivision. The first one was amazing. I fell in love with it at first sight. It was a 3 bedroom 1 bath that had an addition on it that added a huge den, deck, and master bedroom with private bathroom. So that is a total of 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Absolutely tons of space in this house. Negative points are that it buts up against the higway in the back and the road noise is quite substantial. Although you don't hear it in the house at all. Also, it has a single car carport with no room on the side to add another pull up due to it being too close to teh neighbor's line. In general, there is either a 5 foot or 10 foot rule that says how much space you must have between any construction and your neighbors land. The price was a bit steep as well. It was at 205K and had previously been listed as high as 240K. 4 years ago the byer had gotten a 201K mortgage on the place. Since I was hoping for < 200K I didn't see him as willing to go for it. In addition, the house was from an estate sale and the folks selling it didn't know nearly as much about the house as I would liked. i still had a bad taste in my house from a similar situation in the previous house that i had bid upon.
The other house was a 3 bedroom 2 bath unit with a full unfinished basement. Its NOT next to the highway but you can hear the road although its not nearly as obtrusive. This house has a helluva lof of land behind it. I'd guess 3/4 of an acre if not more. And it has a 2 car carport. Plus the basement has already had some work done on it. Its got a completely stubbed out bathroom and one bedroom has already been mostly finished. There has been work done on installing a hanging ceiling and all the electrical has already there. Plus half of the area has already had industrial tile installed. Oh yeah, the washer/dryer hookups are down there. (which will suck to have to go downstairs to do laundry). Screened in back porch is fairly large size and there is an entranceway to the kitched and back porch from the carport. And they only wanted $199K. It was divorce situation so they really needed to sell the properly. The woman involved was still living there and the house had been on the market for a while. since I know from personal experience that things are never over until the last vestiages of financial linkages are severed, I *know* that they wanted to ditch this house soon.
So, I slept on it. Waitng had caused me to miss out on a few houses already so i decided that was going to happen a second time. So I called my parents and made arrangements to meet them in Atlanta Thursday morning to look at the houses. My mother fell in lose with the first house and my father fell in love with the second. With their seal of approval, I thought about it and put a bid in on the house with the basement. Resell value of a house near a freeway is lower and in addition, they were asking more so I thought I would end up paying more for that unit.
I offerered 5K under what they wanted plus them paying the closing costs. And they pretty much went for it. The only real change is that they wanted a 7 day inspection period versus teh 12 day I asked for. I am also getting the refridgerator that is already there which is good since I don't have one of my own at the moment.
Closing is set for the 24th. I have my inspection scheduled for Tuesday the 3rd. Assuming that all goes well, then I'll be a house ownder ina few weeks and yet again possess MIND NUMBING DEBT :-)
Assuming that they find nothing of consequence that is a deal breaker, the next thing to do is figured out if I want to do any work on the house at all. Right now the answer is no, the color scheme is fine for me although the off-pink office is a bit odd. But its growing on me :-)
My complex will allow me to break my lease for one month's rent. Not great but still not a bad idea since I'm really unhappy with where I'm living at the moment. I've already been packing stuff up since I knew I was going *somewhere*. I just didn't know when.
So the current tentatively plan is to close on the 24th and move on the 28th. I've been given a reference to a company called Labor Ready which supposedly can hire out a couple of able bodied mem on a per hour basis. I figured it'll take about 2 hours to pack a 24 foot truck and 2 hours to unload it. Even if its $100/hour, its better than me having all my friends try to convince our bodies that its a good idea to abuse themselves for half a day. I'm too old for this crap.
So yeah, the short of it is that I'm mostly likely going to be a home owner in a few weeks and I'll be moving at the end of Aprill. I've still got butterflies in my stomach and a ton of other things to worry about. But its still a great thing in general.
A few of those houses were amazing horrible. The most horrific offenders looked like it had been used as an opium den and the folks had left post haste. The most impressive of them looked like someone was a long time client of said opium den and had every room decorated from a different pop culture period of the America. Including the hottub room. The disco ball in the kitchen is what *really* disturbted me though. But if you have 199K to purchase the place, another 10K to purchase new designs for it and another 60K to get them implemented, you would have a palace. Hellthe place even had a swimming pool. Of course the fact that is was literally next to a middle school was not a big selling point for me.
Anyway, the last two houses I looked at were near I-285 and Lawrenceville Hwy in the Montreal Woods subdivision. The first one was amazing. I fell in love with it at first sight. It was a 3 bedroom 1 bath that had an addition on it that added a huge den, deck, and master bedroom with private bathroom. So that is a total of 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Absolutely tons of space in this house. Negative points are that it buts up against the higway in the back and the road noise is quite substantial. Although you don't hear it in the house at all. Also, it has a single car carport with no room on the side to add another pull up due to it being too close to teh neighbor's line. In general, there is either a 5 foot or 10 foot rule that says how much space you must have between any construction and your neighbors land. The price was a bit steep as well. It was at 205K and had previously been listed as high as 240K. 4 years ago the byer had gotten a 201K mortgage on the place. Since I was hoping for < 200K I didn't see him as willing to go for it. In addition, the house was from an estate sale and the folks selling it didn't know nearly as much about the house as I would liked. i still had a bad taste in my house from a similar situation in the previous house that i had bid upon.
The other house was a 3 bedroom 2 bath unit with a full unfinished basement. Its NOT next to the highway but you can hear the road although its not nearly as obtrusive. This house has a helluva lof of land behind it. I'd guess 3/4 of an acre if not more. And it has a 2 car carport. Plus the basement has already had some work done on it. Its got a completely stubbed out bathroom and one bedroom has already been mostly finished. There has been work done on installing a hanging ceiling and all the electrical has already there. Plus half of the area has already had industrial tile installed. Oh yeah, the washer/dryer hookups are down there. (which will suck to have to go downstairs to do laundry). Screened in back porch is fairly large size and there is an entranceway to the kitched and back porch from the carport. And they only wanted $199K. It was divorce situation so they really needed to sell the properly. The woman involved was still living there and the house had been on the market for a while. since I know from personal experience that things are never over until the last vestiages of financial linkages are severed, I *know* that they wanted to ditch this house soon.
So, I slept on it. Waitng had caused me to miss out on a few houses already so i decided that was going to happen a second time. So I called my parents and made arrangements to meet them in Atlanta Thursday morning to look at the houses. My mother fell in lose with the first house and my father fell in love with the second. With their seal of approval, I thought about it and put a bid in on the house with the basement. Resell value of a house near a freeway is lower and in addition, they were asking more so I thought I would end up paying more for that unit.
I offerered 5K under what they wanted plus them paying the closing costs. And they pretty much went for it. The only real change is that they wanted a 7 day inspection period versus teh 12 day I asked for. I am also getting the refridgerator that is already there which is good since I don't have one of my own at the moment.
Closing is set for the 24th. I have my inspection scheduled for Tuesday the 3rd. Assuming that all goes well, then I'll be a house ownder ina few weeks and yet again possess MIND NUMBING DEBT :-)
Assuming that they find nothing of consequence that is a deal breaker, the next thing to do is figured out if I want to do any work on the house at all. Right now the answer is no, the color scheme is fine for me although the off-pink office is a bit odd. But its growing on me :-)
My complex will allow me to break my lease for one month's rent. Not great but still not a bad idea since I'm really unhappy with where I'm living at the moment. I've already been packing stuff up since I knew I was going *somewhere*. I just didn't know when.
So the current tentatively plan is to close on the 24th and move on the 28th. I've been given a reference to a company called Labor Ready which supposedly can hire out a couple of able bodied mem on a per hour basis. I figured it'll take about 2 hours to pack a 24 foot truck and 2 hours to unload it. Even if its $100/hour, its better than me having all my friends try to convince our bodies that its a good idea to abuse themselves for half a day. I'm too old for this crap.
So yeah, the short of it is that I'm mostly likely going to be a home owner in a few weeks and I'll be moving at the end of Aprill. I've still got butterflies in my stomach and a ton of other things to worry about. But its still a great thing in general.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:20 am (UTC)But unlike you, I know better than to get just two people to help me move all my worldly possessions. Doesn't matter if they are friends ore not, there is safety in numbers when you have this much stuff :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 08:34 am (UTC)There was a stage where I could have gotten help IF A) I knew where the stuff was going to go and B) if my stuff was sufficiently organized that moving me would not be a brutal experience reminiscent of one or two of the bad moves that you and I have experienced. So, a random couple of days involved - buying 140 lb metal utility shelves from Home Depot, constructing one, porting a shelf's worth of game collection onto it, deconstructing the shelf, setting it up where it was going to go, reloading the games onto it. Now repeat for a lot of my stuff. While I know that I have friends in the area who would have been more than happy for the opportunity to mock me while helping me move, I would have felt vaguely guilty subjecting them to my mess. That's probably something I need to work on. At any rate, I'm now reacquainted with everything I own, my legs and arms might have developed what athletes call "tone", and I have extra character that might bring the net total to something that someone could shake a stick at.
At any rate, I'm sure when you said "two people" you really meant Dan S. and that infamous move where he only had two women who would come out to help him. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-31 11:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 12:21 am (UTC)I think this is yet another sign that I'm way beyond the point where I need to graduate so I can go out and actually get a house that's not tethered to the school. Of course, a GF might not be such a bad thing in between leaving school and getting a house but that's a horse of an entirely different color. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:22 am (UTC)Concerning the girlfriend thing, call me sometime. I have a lead :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:51 am (UTC)I'll give you a ring later this week, I'll IM you for your number.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:54 am (UTC)Peace.
:)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 05:26 pm (UTC)