Right now we are at the furthest point we have ever been in the home buying process. For the past 3 years we have rented a wonderful 3 bedroom townhouse. But the townhouse has some issues; It is near the freeway which means we have that car/ocean noise, There is also very little area for Jayme to play outside, and as Jayme as grown larger the townhouse has grown smaller and smaller to the point that adding another child would make our living conditions VERY cramped.
But we found a new house that would fix all of these issues. 4 bedrooms, on a super quiet culdesac, large kitchen/family room, land for gardening and for Jayme to play outside. It’s also still in Happy Valley and more importantly in Jayme’s school district. it’s also very close to where we live now, just a bit further up the mountain.
Anthony found the house online. It was priced a bit above the price range we had been looking at all of last year, but not above our budget. Deb our realtor took us over and right away both of us loved it. When we found out that the neighborhood had a annual Christmas lights contest everyone was all in.
We placed an offer and began a biding war with a stubborn computer. The home is bank owned and the bank uses an online bidding process. Nice thing is you get an answer every morning at 6am. But your talking to a computer and not someone you can really barter with. The computer knows only numbers and the minimum offer it can take. It took several offers before we found the right offer combination that worked for us and we accepted the computers counter.
Next step was to inspect the place. We all drove over to the house on a Saturday afternoon and got to watch the sewer line be inspected. The inspector lowers (shoves) a camera on a hose down into the bowels of the house and inspects the pipes all the way to the city sewer. The best thing is we got to see it live AND he gave us a DVD to take home and watch again and again. Who needs Netflix when we have sewer inspection video! Our pipes passed with flying colors.
Next inspection was the full home inspection. The inspector came out and found a few things that we got us a bit worried. First the grading on the backside of the house is a slight hill. There was some concerns about water run off and the foundation, but no was damage found. Second was the fuse box, which turns out is a Federal Electric, we have been told that they tend to catch fire. The final issue relates to the first. Under the house the plastic sheeting has been torn and there is some standing water and debris on the plastic. The inspector could not tell where the water had come from. There were no signs of leaks in the foundation and no rot under the house.
So we knew we had some landscaping, some cleaning and a new fuse box to have installed. We got an estimate on how much it would be to clean out the crawl space install new plastic tarp. Then asked the bank to make the repairs and with a shock they came back with an offer to knock some money off the agreed sales price. Thrilled we accepted. We now just need to set some of that savings aside and make the repairs before we move in.
Last step was loan appraisal and now we are waiting for the loan paperwork and our signing date. We have been told it will be in the last week of February. So come March we might be homeowners.