So we whole heartedly began packing today. We have until Friday night to get most of it packed and ready for movers both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday we were supposed to get started but I was not "in the mood." I could not motivate myself to do it. Today M. stayed home and helped me get started. We started in the worst of the worst...the office. We spent the whole day going through files and organizing it getting it ready to pack. I shredded 5 garbage bags of old files. I also got some of the living room done.
This whole process has been very emotional for me. I can't even explain it. I am a little sad about leaving the house but at the same time ready to move on. It just seems that even though we sold the house and we are in position to move on...I am stuck and everyone else is moving on around me. I think that this is in part to losing a job that I wanted and M. getting the job that he wanted. I am happy for him but scared that he will be gone so much and we don't have a place to call our own that we will lose any sembalance of the life that we once had. What will happen to our time together? What will happen to the plans that brought us to the decision to sell the house and move in the first place? Will I be able to live with my parents again? I am not the single woman that I was the last time that I lived with them. What will happen to our privacy and ability to share a life as husband and wife?
I feel completely stuck in a rut and I am not happy in the life that I see coming ahead. I will continue to rely on God. That is all that I can do right now. Perhaps I will become more independent and it will turn out to be a good thing. Perhaps that independence will put space in my marriage. Perhaps it will put too much space. Part of the reason for this move was to be closer to family and also to friends, but right now I feel like I am not fun to be around and would be best to be left alone. So perhaps I will throw myself into my work. Without having to be responsible to get M. because we will no longer be carpooling together, I see myself working longer hours. Not because I want to but because I have nothing to go home for. A garage? A fight with the parents? A sleeping husband?
While I have no one to blame for how I feel...abandonment it not a fun or good feeling. I was still trying to figure out how to be married and now I have to figure out how to be my own person again. Add to that many layers of tension in the house that I will be living due to other situations that revolve around 5 adults living under the same roof.
So I am just venting. Apparently I wear my emotions on my face as whenever I go out right now I have the whole world worrying about me. I don't know that I want that. I think that it makes me want to stay in more. Not a good feeling when you only have a place to stay for 3 more days.
Well we shall see what tomorrow brings. Another day of packing... we are supposed to help my mom pack the room that we are going to stay in. I am worried that the room won't be ready for us to move on Saturday. Anytime I try to discuss with my mom what needs to be done I am frustrated. Apparently I am easily frustrated these days...who would have guessed?
I am rambling now...so I will head to bed for tonight. Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
4th and final
Well, I have been at a loss about how I wanted to write this. I think I wrote in my last post that we received our 4th offer. Well...it is the 4th and final. We are sold! Well at least it looks that way. We close on the 6th. So it seems that all is going forward with the sale of our house.
We fixed the A/C. Of course it was way more than I thought it would be but needless to say it is done. We still have to fix a window before the 6th but I think that is it as far as repairs are concerned.
I told you that I would update you on how our house hunting was going. Unfortunately it is bad news. We looked and looked and crunched numbers and crunched them again and between figuring out what we can afford and what kinds of houses are out there in that price range, we were not pleased with the pickins. So we are not buying a house right now! We thought that we might try and see if the right one was out there for us and try to move in before school started but it seems that was not in God's plan for us. We did find a couple that we really liked. Several of them we just a little too far from our parents and since being close to family was the whole reason for this move we ruled those out. We did make an offer on two others but I wasn't completely satisfied. so we continued to look. Our continued search soon ruled out one of the ones that we made an offer on. I think that we both we uncomfortable with the fact that the home was at the top of the price range for the neighborhood. Buying a home at the top price point in the neighborhood does not bode well for resale options. So we withdrew that offer. We had actually made an offer on two homes at the same time. The other offer was a really good one and the house was great but we came in second in line. I guess that one really wasn't meant to be. In our continued search we found a 3rd home that we were interested in but there was already an offer on that one as well.
That left us with no where to live. We started frantically searching for something to rent, either house or apartment. I was so disheartened. I didn't want to spend more money on rent than we would on a morgage and that left us renting some rat hole of an apartment. I was very uncomfortable with this. I was also realizing that with just a little bit more of a down payment we could afford a better house more like what we want and not settle for something just because it is all that we can afford. Seriously the difference in only like $10,000. I started thinking..."Is there a way to save more money?" I started thinking about other posibilities. It occurred to me that my mom has a converted garage and maybe we could arrange something with that.
I talked to M. about it and we decided that we could live in my parents converted garage if my parents agreed. I spoke with my mom about it and she and my dad agreed. Perhaps reluctantly but agreed nevertheless. I hope that it will all work out. For me, although I know that it will be stressful it will also mean that we can save quite a bit of money very quickly. In the midst of all this M. got a job offer for a better job that will pay a little bit more so that will be helpful toward our goal of saving more money. I am happy for him because he has been trying for this job for three years more or less. I know that he will do great at it and I am proud of him.
But back to my point. For the time being we will be living with my parents. I hope and pray that this goes well. Mainly I pray that the communication remains open and patience abounds. My parents and sister are having to work frantically to clear the room out as it was full of junk. We have to get a fast move on packing our whole house. It will be a small miracle to get everything done in about a week. We will keep looking for a house and hopefully be able to jump on it as soon as we possibly can. I am tired of coming in second on the houses that we are interested in. Please pray for us!
We fixed the A/C. Of course it was way more than I thought it would be but needless to say it is done. We still have to fix a window before the 6th but I think that is it as far as repairs are concerned.
I told you that I would update you on how our house hunting was going. Unfortunately it is bad news. We looked and looked and crunched numbers and crunched them again and between figuring out what we can afford and what kinds of houses are out there in that price range, we were not pleased with the pickins. So we are not buying a house right now! We thought that we might try and see if the right one was out there for us and try to move in before school started but it seems that was not in God's plan for us. We did find a couple that we really liked. Several of them we just a little too far from our parents and since being close to family was the whole reason for this move we ruled those out. We did make an offer on two others but I wasn't completely satisfied. so we continued to look. Our continued search soon ruled out one of the ones that we made an offer on. I think that we both we uncomfortable with the fact that the home was at the top of the price range for the neighborhood. Buying a home at the top price point in the neighborhood does not bode well for resale options. So we withdrew that offer. We had actually made an offer on two homes at the same time. The other offer was a really good one and the house was great but we came in second in line. I guess that one really wasn't meant to be. In our continued search we found a 3rd home that we were interested in but there was already an offer on that one as well.
That left us with no where to live. We started frantically searching for something to rent, either house or apartment. I was so disheartened. I didn't want to spend more money on rent than we would on a morgage and that left us renting some rat hole of an apartment. I was very uncomfortable with this. I was also realizing that with just a little bit more of a down payment we could afford a better house more like what we want and not settle for something just because it is all that we can afford. Seriously the difference in only like $10,000. I started thinking..."Is there a way to save more money?" I started thinking about other posibilities. It occurred to me that my mom has a converted garage and maybe we could arrange something with that.
I talked to M. about it and we decided that we could live in my parents converted garage if my parents agreed. I spoke with my mom about it and she and my dad agreed. Perhaps reluctantly but agreed nevertheless. I hope that it will all work out. For me, although I know that it will be stressful it will also mean that we can save quite a bit of money very quickly. In the midst of all this M. got a job offer for a better job that will pay a little bit more so that will be helpful toward our goal of saving more money. I am happy for him because he has been trying for this job for three years more or less. I know that he will do great at it and I am proud of him.
But back to my point. For the time being we will be living with my parents. I hope and pray that this goes well. Mainly I pray that the communication remains open and patience abounds. My parents and sister are having to work frantically to clear the room out as it was full of junk. We have to get a fast move on packing our whole house. It will be a small miracle to get everything done in about a week. We will keep looking for a house and hopefully be able to jump on it as soon as we possibly can. I am tired of coming in second on the houses that we are interested in. Please pray for us!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Good News
Well, we got word yesterday that the inspection went well and all the buyers were asking for is the A/C to be serviced. Oddly enough, we had already scheduled the A/C guy to today to do those repairs/service. So of course, you can imagine how excited we were to hear that if we agreed to have the A/C serviced they buyer was forfeiting the right to wait though the rest of the option period. So we signed the papers and sent them back immediately and effectively ended the option period.
We went looking for a place for us on Monday and found some homes that we really liked. We came home and crunched the numbers and discovered, however, that we could not afford as much as we thought. So we are now considering something priced a little lower than we originally thought.
Today we are hitting the streets again and going to look a few lower priced homes. I will update here when I know more.
We went looking for a place for us on Monday and found some homes that we really liked. We came home and crunched the numbers and discovered, however, that we could not afford as much as we thought. So we are now considering something priced a little lower than we originally thought.
Today we are hitting the streets again and going to look a few lower priced homes. I will update here when I know more.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
4th contract
We received a 4th contact on our house last week. Not 4 at a time but if you have been following, we have already received and had cancelled 3 contracts. Anyway, I am really hoping that this one sticks. They had the inspector come this Saturday. We are waiting to hear back their demands on that one.
Friday night we were able to fix a few things around the house in anticipation of the inspection. The last two inspections were passed on to us so I made a list of things that needed our attention. Now of course, since our home was built in 1980, there are a few problems that we are just not willing to deal with. These are not things that are a danger to anyone buying the home but just things that you would expect when you buy a 28 year old home. We did fix the garbage disposal and switch though. I am finally able to use my garbage disposal after at least 4 months of non use. Boy did I miss it!!! Anyway, the switch was bad and under the disposal some of the wiring had come out of the conduit. Our friend C. was able to be our handy man and fix those two items. Also we were able to install a dryer vent cover on the exterior of the house.
So as we wait, hopefully, to hear something...I have begun to dream about a new home again. The timing of this offer has come that if we move quickly we might be able to move in before school starts. We will be going tomorrow to look at some homes for us to buy. I don't know what will come of this looking adventure. Saturday we went and drove around the areas we are interested in. I am reservedly excited about tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow we will also hear something about how the inspection went.
I have to say that I was disappointed with the quality of the inspector. We we arrived home late last night after attending a friends birthday party and discovered that the inspector had left the water in one of the bathrooms dripping and we found a dirty towel and pencil in the middle of the living room floor. It amazes me the differences in inspectors. The first inspector quoted 2003 code on a 1980's house...obviously a little over the top (42 pages over the top). No wonder the people got scared off. The second inspector was pretty good and the report was about what I expected. This inspector was sloppy in my opinion. That might work in our favor. Maybe they missed a few things. Funnily enough, we gave the couple that has a contract on the house right now a copy of the previous report that both M. and I agreed with. We offered to fix a few things. They decided to spend the money anyway and get their own inspection. Could have saved themselves $400. Anyway, we already fixed one of the three things we offered to fix. We will do the other things soon but I guess we will see what else they ask for.
Anyway, I will update again soon. Pray that tomorrow goes well. Also pray that M. finds a new job soon. We are really hoping that he will be able to move a step up the career ladder. Especially since our current jobs will not be offering even a cost of living raise this year. I am already finding it hard to adjust our budget to accomodate the rising cost of gas and groceries.
Friday night we were able to fix a few things around the house in anticipation of the inspection. The last two inspections were passed on to us so I made a list of things that needed our attention. Now of course, since our home was built in 1980, there are a few problems that we are just not willing to deal with. These are not things that are a danger to anyone buying the home but just things that you would expect when you buy a 28 year old home. We did fix the garbage disposal and switch though. I am finally able to use my garbage disposal after at least 4 months of non use. Boy did I miss it!!! Anyway, the switch was bad and under the disposal some of the wiring had come out of the conduit. Our friend C. was able to be our handy man and fix those two items. Also we were able to install a dryer vent cover on the exterior of the house.
So as we wait, hopefully, to hear something...I have begun to dream about a new home again. The timing of this offer has come that if we move quickly we might be able to move in before school starts. We will be going tomorrow to look at some homes for us to buy. I don't know what will come of this looking adventure. Saturday we went and drove around the areas we are interested in. I am reservedly excited about tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow we will also hear something about how the inspection went.
I have to say that I was disappointed with the quality of the inspector. We we arrived home late last night after attending a friends birthday party and discovered that the inspector had left the water in one of the bathrooms dripping and we found a dirty towel and pencil in the middle of the living room floor. It amazes me the differences in inspectors. The first inspector quoted 2003 code on a 1980's house...obviously a little over the top (42 pages over the top). No wonder the people got scared off. The second inspector was pretty good and the report was about what I expected. This inspector was sloppy in my opinion. That might work in our favor. Maybe they missed a few things. Funnily enough, we gave the couple that has a contract on the house right now a copy of the previous report that both M. and I agreed with. We offered to fix a few things. They decided to spend the money anyway and get their own inspection. Could have saved themselves $400. Anyway, we already fixed one of the three things we offered to fix. We will do the other things soon but I guess we will see what else they ask for.
Anyway, I will update again soon. Pray that tomorrow goes well. Also pray that M. finds a new job soon. We are really hoping that he will be able to move a step up the career ladder. Especially since our current jobs will not be offering even a cost of living raise this year. I am already finding it hard to adjust our budget to accomodate the rising cost of gas and groceries.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Contracts Come and Go
I must correct something that I said in the last post. When I said that it had been exactly 4 months since we put the house on the market I had forgotten that I had started that post in May. As of July 6th the house has been on the market 4 months.
So as of today we have had 3 offers on the house. Our first offer came about a month or so into the process. I got really excited. We had taken a break from looking for a new house for us for about 3 weeks. We had just decided to start looking again. I called our buyer realtor and requested to look at some homes but he told me that he was going out of the state for two weeks. At the time I wasn't too worried because we didn't have an offer. Little did I know that there was a message on the machine at home telling us that there had been an offer. We we out to dinner and when we returned home and got the message waiting for us we were excited. It was a decent offer so we took it. Of course this put us in a big hurry to find us a place to move to. But I had just spoken with our buyer realtor and he was going to be out of town. We called the agency and another buyer agent was able to show us some homes. I was really excited and didn't want to wait. I wanted to find our new home. For the first time it felt real that we would actually sell it.
Let me take you on a side note here...I am in the position of selling my first home before I have bought my first home. Since M. already owned the house when we got married I kind of inherited being a home owner. For me that is a really weird place to be since I have not been through this process before and I don't know what to expect.
Anyway, the weekend came and went and we looked at some houses. And then Monday came! And the buyer on our house backed out. No reason given. My little dream came crashing down. I was so disappointed. I thought for sure we would be able to move before the end of the year and all our plans would fall into place. I was mistaken.
About a month later we got another offer and I was a lot more cautious this time. I didn't want to get excited until I was sure that this was for real but the buyer had cash and wanted to move quickly so we had to find something quickly. Also we were now approaching the end of the school year and for teachers that is a very busy time. Since both M. and I are teachers our lives were in something of an uproar. We were also preparing to leave the country for vacation. The buyer this time had an inspection done. That was one step further than we got the last time. Unfortunately the inspection was over the top and of course a 1980 house doesn't meet 2003 code!!!!
At the same time we found a house that we really liked and we made an offer of it. While we were waiting to hear if the seller would accept our offer we got word that there was another offer for the house that we wanted. We had to make what is called a best and final. Not half and hour after we made our best and final we found out that our buyer decided to back out. They didn't even try to approach us about repairs. We had to pull our offer on the new house since we cannot afford two morgages.
Not soon after we left on vacation and while in another country we got another offer. It was not a good offer and after much agony we decided to take it just so that we can be rid of the house. They new buyer was having to finance at 100% and asked us to cover a huge chunk of her closing costs. She did the inspection and approached us for some repairs. We agreed to do a few but not all. She continued to come back and ask us for more and more things...even altering the original agreed upon offer. We finally had to call it quits and say final is final. She promptly backed out. Luckily, we had decided to wait until the option period was over to start looking for something for us. On that note we were spared the disappointment of losing another house that we wanted.
So we are back to square one. I have to say I don't like this emotional roller coster one bit!!!!
So as of today we have had 3 offers on the house. Our first offer came about a month or so into the process. I got really excited. We had taken a break from looking for a new house for us for about 3 weeks. We had just decided to start looking again. I called our buyer realtor and requested to look at some homes but he told me that he was going out of the state for two weeks. At the time I wasn't too worried because we didn't have an offer. Little did I know that there was a message on the machine at home telling us that there had been an offer. We we out to dinner and when we returned home and got the message waiting for us we were excited. It was a decent offer so we took it. Of course this put us in a big hurry to find us a place to move to. But I had just spoken with our buyer realtor and he was going to be out of town. We called the agency and another buyer agent was able to show us some homes. I was really excited and didn't want to wait. I wanted to find our new home. For the first time it felt real that we would actually sell it.
Let me take you on a side note here...I am in the position of selling my first home before I have bought my first home. Since M. already owned the house when we got married I kind of inherited being a home owner. For me that is a really weird place to be since I have not been through this process before and I don't know what to expect.
Anyway, the weekend came and went and we looked at some houses. And then Monday came! And the buyer on our house backed out. No reason given. My little dream came crashing down. I was so disappointed. I thought for sure we would be able to move before the end of the year and all our plans would fall into place. I was mistaken.
About a month later we got another offer and I was a lot more cautious this time. I didn't want to get excited until I was sure that this was for real but the buyer had cash and wanted to move quickly so we had to find something quickly. Also we were now approaching the end of the school year and for teachers that is a very busy time. Since both M. and I are teachers our lives were in something of an uproar. We were also preparing to leave the country for vacation. The buyer this time had an inspection done. That was one step further than we got the last time. Unfortunately the inspection was over the top and of course a 1980 house doesn't meet 2003 code!!!!
At the same time we found a house that we really liked and we made an offer of it. While we were waiting to hear if the seller would accept our offer we got word that there was another offer for the house that we wanted. We had to make what is called a best and final. Not half and hour after we made our best and final we found out that our buyer decided to back out. They didn't even try to approach us about repairs. We had to pull our offer on the new house since we cannot afford two morgages.
Not soon after we left on vacation and while in another country we got another offer. It was not a good offer and after much agony we decided to take it just so that we can be rid of the house. They new buyer was having to finance at 100% and asked us to cover a huge chunk of her closing costs. She did the inspection and approached us for some repairs. We agreed to do a few but not all. She continued to come back and ask us for more and more things...even altering the original agreed upon offer. We finally had to call it quits and say final is final. She promptly backed out. Luckily, we had decided to wait until the option period was over to start looking for something for us. On that note we were spared the disappointment of losing another house that we wanted.
So we are back to square one. I have to say I don't like this emotional roller coster one bit!!!!
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