Another Day In The Life Of A Basement Dweller

So our realtor has now told us that the house we wanted in Middleboro has changed.  In a way.  He said that the selling realtor left him a message that someone's mother would pay to have the septic system tested.  Remember that this is the one they wanted us to check and see if it was working.  Thus wasting our money for no reason.  Of course my realtor calls me up telling me the last name of the woman willing to do the testing.  And this is because he did not understand who it was and thought (in his wild dreams), that it was someone we knew.  So I told him I did not know who this woman was and said that maybe it was the mother of the people who are selling the home so it will have a better chance of being sold.  My realtor says, "Oh yeah, that would make sense"! Duuuuuuuh!  Of course it would.  It's called common sense.  Which I have ranted about before being not so common!

So in the end, if it does pass Title V, we just might get the house with the gorgeous yard and peaceful neighborhood.  The one that needs a floor in the master bedroom and a much needed wall in the one bathroom.  That is, if FHA allows it.  I feel like I am in a circus because of all the hoops they are making us jump through.  Maybe after this I can get a real job in one.

Hope everyone is having a fabulously awesome autumn day!  Thanks for reading.

Plans Always Change

Tonight we were suppose to see three houses. One realtor got sick, don't know why that even matters they just give my realtor a code on the phone usually. And another they couldn't show us tonight. So we will see those others on Saturday. We drove by one of them and it doesn't have a For Sale sign in front. So I'm leery about that one.

The one we saw tonight was just down the street from where we live now. It was a contemporary design. The whole upstairs had skylights and funky triangle windows and a beautiful bathroom with a jacuzzi tub and separate shower. Then I stood near the tub and looked out one of the funky windows and noticed that you can see inside the neighbors kitchen. Which means they can probably see inside our bathroom. Which means I would have to start working out because the windows are too odd to get shades to fit.

The yard, I thought, would be nice. It was a third of an acre. But the neighbors very large garage with lots of windows and two stories high was right on the border of our land. And their back door was 6' facing into our yard. The house we saw also had a garage, but it was attached and behind the house. So again we have a house with no real comfortable access to the yard. What is wrong with people nowadays? Doesn't anyone use their yards. I did get to meet our realtors wife. She is very nice and grew up in Hyde Park. It's funny because she is one of 5 and he is one of 11. Sound familiar?

I did forget to take a picture of this place. Sorry.Now I'm reading up on one of the houses for Saturday. First listed in January at $249,900. Then reduced to $159,900. Six months later Under Agreement. Two weeks later Back on Market. Two weeks later Under Agreement again. Two weeks after that price change to $172,400. One month later BOM with a new price of $185,900 that now says Sellers Bank wants no lower offers than this.

Why is buying a house so complicated?

Finally His Idea

So yesterday we went to see a house our Realtor actually found for us and thought we

would like. It was in Middleborough. We got there at 5 and due at 5:30. We saw a man and a woman standing outside the home so we drove by. When we did get there our agent was a few minutes late. But he didn't have the golden key this time. I guess the agent was suppose to meet us there at 5:30 and didn't. He called her cell and her office and we waited for 45 minutes until she called back and gave him the lock box code. My husband said she probably wants to sell the house herself and get full commission. When we got inside it needed work. Why don't they post that on the sites? I get the sites the realtors see so it makes absolutely no sense to me.

There was one bathroom and one of the walls was a bookcase and was not attached to the rest of the wall so you could see straight through the bathroom. One of the floors was plywood. There were only two bedrooms even though I believe it said three. You needed to walk through one bedroom to get to another and in that bedroom there was another weird bookcase covering a large closet. I was told by the neighbor "Ruth" that there were 5 children living there. I wonder if one of them slept in the closet. That would have been a fire hazard. Plus the fact that the smoke detector kept beeping that it needed a battery.

Of course the yard was almost an acre and flat and beautiful. There was also a barn on the property and a shed. But the shed was attached to the house and actually looked like a room from outside. Which is dumb because it means you have to pay taxes on it and it is counted as living space I guess. The driveway was short and came right up to the house. So you could look out your bedroom window and it would seem like the car was in the house.I gave our realtor a check so we could put a bid on it. Lots of people were looking at it and it was only on the market for 1 day. Then on our way home our realtor calls and says the house realtor called the owners and they won't pay to have the septic checked so she wanted to know if we were willing to do it. So we would be paying $500 for something we might not even get because my husband does not want to buy a house that we have to fix or replace the septic. On the internet it just said "not done" and they do it when the get an offer. Today when I checked it said "septic is buyer's responsibility"! Why can't they find that out in the first place????  So I guess we don't get that house either. And it was a short sale, which is fine, but only on its first day. They can take up to a year to finalize and by that time we could have found the perfect house and lived there for months.

Now my husband wants to check out the Sutton area. But as I was looking online this morning, I found a house in Stoughton and Avon that I want to check out. Fingers grossed we find something within the month.

Looking Further West

So today we went to Wrentham and Milford to check out two houses. The first house was in Milford. It was on a semi busy road which is okay with me if you can't hear the traffic. The inside was all done up new. New carpet, kitchen, nice redish paint on the walls. But the kitchen was in the front of the house. The sink was over on one side and the stove on the other???? To get to the living room, you walk between the bathroom with the shower and a staircase. The living room was long, but had ins and outs so it looked like 3 different areas. And the middle area had the stairs.

Upstairs they had another bathroom, which was very nice, but only had a tub and no shower because the ceiling was slanted. They did all this beautiful new work with new rugs too, but never swept up all the little pieces of everything. It was just plain weird. They did have a nice landing at the top of the stairs, but you had to walk right off the stairs to get to it. And the stairs were right outside one of the bedrooms. And I mean if you got up at night to use the bathroom, you might just end up using the one downstairs. hahaha.It had a small deck off the side at the end of the driveway. But the only set of

stairs went to the driveway not the yard. You had to walk beside the porch and down a steep incline to go to the yard that was two levels. Seems like the only safe way to get to the backyard was through the basement. Which had a sump pump and smelled a little. So I wonder how the children went out to their large three quarter acre yard and how the parents ran out to help them if they were hurt, and how you would have a picnic or cookout back there. It disturbed me a lot.

We've had our realtor for weeks now. He knows we only qualify for an FHA loan. So why, in the world would he waste his and our time looking at a total fixer upper? I know I have better things to do with my day than smell funny smells, walk up dangerous stairs and see people's trash all over the place. This house in Wrentham had some work done by the homeowners, but could not be finished because her husband passed away. That was really sad, but would not and could not make me buy this house. In the kitchen, they put in new cabinets and a nice sink. It was in front of a window, which is usually a great idea. But, this countertop was two inches above the windowsill. Craziness is the only word I have for that.

It was actually a large house and could be made into something gorgeous, but the one acre yard could never be fixed. It had a fence halfway down the middle cutting off the more than half acre that dropped to nowhere. Interesting at best. And this house had another driveway that was so steep we would never be able to drive up it in the winter. I thought our driveway now was steep, yikes!

Realtors And All We Need To Know

REALTORS AND ALL WE NEED TO KNOWSo tonight we are going to look at three houses in the Plymouth area. I’m not sure we want to live in that area because in the summer there is a lot of traffic on the highway and my darling husband takes the highway to work. But if the house and yard are magnificent (for our price range), we might go.  It is good for our Realtor because he is from the area and won’t have to drive far like we’ve been having him do. Why do I feel bad about that? He will get paid when we find our home. It’s a major decision we have to make and here I am worrying about how far our Realtor has to drive to show us a house with his magic key. What is wrong with me?

We are still waiting for our $1,000 check that we gave him weeks ago when we put a bid on our “dream house” that someone else will soon be living in. He told us that he asked his boss for it and he still didn’t get it from him. Something about it being cashed (which it wasn’t). Hopefully we will get it tonight or else we will not be able to put it down on another “dream house”.There are so many rules and things you must go through to get a house. I have been searching the internet and finding things that our Realtor didn’t tell us. Maybe he thought we already knew? Like needing 5% down when you go for the purchase and sales agreement signing. That is when they will finally take the house off the market. Then at the closing you can put down the rest of your money. Problem is, we are getting our money from someplace that needs a signed purchase and sales before they will give it to us. And getting a loan for it is against the law and loan fraud. Which our Realtor says is okay to do since we are paying it off right away. Well, I DON’T THINK SO! Imagine trying to explain that to the judge?

I am also trying to make my own bug spray because we are going to an area where a lady just died of EEE. I don’t like chemicals and don’t like dying even more. One of the houses is on a pond (which my DH does not like, but also, does not know). I try to show him the online posts, but he can’t get into it. So when we go to these houses, he always says, “why didn’t you tell me _____?” And I laugh.

Tomorrow is another day and another set of houses. So after seeing seven houses this week, we might just find what we want.

House Hunting 101

House hunting is a very stressful thing. The most important thing to do is get a really good Realtor. Well, so far we haven’t done that. And we’ve had two of them. One would only show us homes that she wanted to see and would forget to meet us at our designated appointments. The next one, is a very nice person, but seems to be doing it to just have something to do to fill their time. Writing wrong addresses and putting email names instead of real names on legal papers does not seem appropriate.I did a lot of research about finding the right Realtor, and yet I still went with someone just because they seemed nice.

They say the average person finds their home in a few weeks. Well, we have been looking for over a month and have not seen very many homes. I know we must cut down our very broad area that we are searching in, but that is difficult. Every time I pick a place I want to see, it seems to have a problem or an offer. So far we have made one offer and it was overbid by someone else.I advise anyone looking for a home to educate themself and not depend upon the “professionals”.

I thought my Realtor would say, “hey, I found some homes that would be perfect for you”. Instead I give him a list of towns and he sends an automatic list daily to my email. Well, somedays I don’t get any. So I have two others sending me lists as well. I must sift through the criteria I want because I only get the price and town. No other criteria is filtered. I must check the crime rate, square footage and acreage. I must also make sure it has a basement, passed Title V and is not a Fannie Mae or HomePath house because I do not qualify for those. Then we drive by to make sure we like the area. And only then do we give the list to the Realtor who has the special golden key that gets us into the property.It is all so much work, that I think I deserve part of the 2.5-5% commission that my Realtor is getting. I think it is to pay for his gas when he brings us to these homes because I can’t seem to find anything else he is doing. We also will be getting a lawyer to check the documents at closing. So the only thing we need the Realtor for is his usefulness at getting keys.Hope this rant will open the eyes of some people looking for a home. The only thing we have going for us right now is, we are not selling, just buying.