Well first off, I lost my phone this weekend so if you've tried or are going to try calling me... well I hope I find it at home instead of some random person at the theater or something.
Seth and Alex and I went to see Tron Legacy on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. I hadn't watched the original Tron until earlier this year (Seth nearly fainted when he found that out) and in spite of its age, I loved it. Tron Legacy lived up to it and had some seriously [i]incredible[/i] style. The 3D was great and while I wouldn't exactly go wearing one of the skin tight body suits in public myself, the costumes and EL/CG work that went into them were pretty sweet. The soundtrack by Daft Punk was really good too.
Meanwhile, things with the house are moving along (sort of). We're currently languishing in underwriting for our loan. Here's what happened. When we applied for the loan the loan officer handling it said "Oh! Your credit is so good that we don't need to do an appraisal of the house!" To which Seth was all, "Um, can we please do one anyways?" Whereupon the loan offer said, "Well no, if we did it, it would just confuse the underwriters." "Well ok..."
However, a week later and with our appraisal contingency deadline approaching rapidly we hear back from the underwriters... since the property had been bought out of foreclosure (I think?) by the developers that we're buying the house from only aa few months before it came on the market, there were all the indicators of a common flipping and bank fraud scheme. "Developers" go in and buy a property, claim they renovated it, and immediately sell it to a straw buyer for way more than it's worth. This type of flipping scheme and shoddy underwriting practices that didn't catch it is one of the reasons the housing market went boom. Funny enough, the underwriters are a bit more attentive now. Long story short, they need the appraisal. And our contingency comes... and goes before they get it done. Now this was fairly concerning for us since if it didn't appraise well our loan could be denied and we wouldn't have any contingency left to get out of the contract and we could lose our 5K deposit. The bank took foreeeever to get the appraisal done and our realtors have been working hard to work out contract extensions with the seller.
Happily, things seem like they're starting to smooth out again. We got the appraisal in today and it came back saying the house is worth $10K more than we're paying for it. Our extensions are pushing back our signing day to January 7, however, so I guess that blows up our plan for an Empty House Party there on New Years Eve. It was going to be BYOF(urniture)!
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Floorplan!
So here's the product of several hours of fiddling around with a floorplan software for kicks and giggles... it's not quite done yet as you can see but, hey. It lets me play with furniture dimensions. Most of the main rooms like the living room, bedrooms, and family room in the basement I measured but some of the others are guestimated.
Friday, December 3, 2010
House Updates
Well the house buying process is progressing along nicely. I did the house inspection the other day and it came back with a remarkably awesome clean bill of health in spite of being about 55 years old. The only problems we have boil down to: (1) two windows that need new caulking, (2) a couple outlets that need the third prong grounding stuff put in and we could use an extra electrical outlet in the family room, (3) gutters that need cleaning, and (4) the back screen door needs a new air piston thingamajig. So overall is dang good shape. Even the stuff we can improve on doesn't need to be done right away. The windows should be a couple days work I can do myself and the electrical stuff is apparently an easy fix and the majority of the cost of that is actually bringing in an electrician.
So other than that, I'm plotting the decorating! I'm trying to take it from a logical perspective and prioritize my purchases. The furniture we have is nice and will do, but it's just not enough to fill the house. The main floor, for example, is going to be empty except for the table in the dining area for a while. The chaise- our only real seating furniture due to size constraints of the apartment- will go in the family room with the tv. But we can even make do with that for a while.
I'm going to start in the bedroom though. We've got a bit of an overlap between moving in there and moving out of the apartment and I want to do things like buy an area rug for the bedroom before moving the bed up there. When we start seriously decorating the living room and family rooms rugs will be the first purchases there as well. The master bedroom is 11x13 (thankfully big enough to fit our king sized bed XD) so I'm looking at rugs in th 8x10 range. As it turns out, they're pretty expensive. Overstock is pretty much my go-to place for furniture and large housey things. We've had great experiences with them in the past, get 5% back from purchases with their rewards program and frequent 7% off everything coupons in the mail from them. This is what I'm looking at...
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Lyndhurst-Light-Greyish-Blue-Floral-Motif-Area-Rug-79-x-109/2241799/product.html
This one has good reviews and I love the steel blue color though the listed size is apparently wrong. it's 7'9 x 9'10 instead of 10'9. Which is smaller than ideal, but would still work and the rug is $250 before discounts, $223 after.
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Lyndhurst-Cream-Oriental-Wool-Rug-9-x-12/5034076/product.html
This has only one review (5 stars though) and is a bit more neutral in colors with brown and gold and ivories. It's also a lot bigger at 9 x 12, which would fill the 11x 13 room beautifully. It is, however, $350 before discounts, $308 after.
A question for those who've bought area rugs before... if this thing is going to be going under a bed and probably a few other miscellaneous pieces of furniture, is it going to need a pad beneath it? I can't imagine it would move much beneath the furniture the way it would out in the open. Pads aren't that expensive, but they are Just One More Thing.
The other thing I want to start thinking about is the family room. I've wanted, for quite a while now, a real couch. A sink-into-and-take-a-nap-it's-so-comfortable couch. Which definitely doesn't come cheap. I want something like this and with this great of reviews but with maybe half the price tag >.> http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Bentley-Premium-Italian-Leather-Sectional-Sofa/4685798/customer-reviews.html
So other than that, I'm plotting the decorating! I'm trying to take it from a logical perspective and prioritize my purchases. The furniture we have is nice and will do, but it's just not enough to fill the house. The main floor, for example, is going to be empty except for the table in the dining area for a while. The chaise- our only real seating furniture due to size constraints of the apartment- will go in the family room with the tv. But we can even make do with that for a while.
I'm going to start in the bedroom though. We've got a bit of an overlap between moving in there and moving out of the apartment and I want to do things like buy an area rug for the bedroom before moving the bed up there. When we start seriously decorating the living room and family rooms rugs will be the first purchases there as well. The master bedroom is 11x13 (thankfully big enough to fit our king sized bed XD) so I'm looking at rugs in th 8x10 range. As it turns out, they're pretty expensive. Overstock is pretty much my go-to place for furniture and large housey things. We've had great experiences with them in the past, get 5% back from purchases with their rewards program and frequent 7% off everything coupons in the mail from them. This is what I'm looking at...
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Lyndhurst-Light-Greyish-Blue-Floral-Motif-Area-Rug-79-x-109/2241799/product.html
This one has good reviews and I love the steel blue color though the listed size is apparently wrong. it's 7'9 x 9'10 instead of 10'9. Which is smaller than ideal, but would still work and the rug is $250 before discounts, $223 after.
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Lyndhurst-Cream-Oriental-Wool-Rug-9-x-12/5034076/product.html
This has only one review (5 stars though) and is a bit more neutral in colors with brown and gold and ivories. It's also a lot bigger at 9 x 12, which would fill the 11x 13 room beautifully. It is, however, $350 before discounts, $308 after.
A question for those who've bought area rugs before... if this thing is going to be going under a bed and probably a few other miscellaneous pieces of furniture, is it going to need a pad beneath it? I can't imagine it would move much beneath the furniture the way it would out in the open. Pads aren't that expensive, but they are Just One More Thing.
The other thing I want to start thinking about is the family room. I've wanted, for quite a while now, a real couch. A sink-into-and-take-a-nap-it's-so-comfortable couch. Which definitely doesn't come cheap. I want something like this and with this great of reviews but with maybe half the price tag >.> http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Bentley-Premium-Italian-Leather-Sectional-Sofa/4685798/customer-reviews.html
Sunday, November 28, 2010
And another contract is signed!
So this weekend we spent Friday and Saturday looking at houses again. It was a little disappointing and sure, we had a couple prospects but none of them were move in ready. Paint, refinishing a tub, and reflooring basements... This was what I had resigned myself to if we wanted to buy in The Rockville area after looking at so many houses. There were a lot of houses with elements that we liked, but precious few that could match up to the standard that the Olympic Street house had set for us.
But last night after we got home and were bandying around repair costs and plans, we got a call. Our agent Fran sounded excited and then spilled... The cash offer on Olympic Street has fallen through. So we get to sign another contract and freak out again as we rush to lock in the lowest rate we can find for that loan.
WOOOOOOOOO!
But last night after we got home and were bandying around repair costs and plans, we got a call. Our agent Fran sounded excited and then spilled... The cash offer on Olympic Street has fallen through. So we get to sign another contract and freak out again as we rush to lock in the lowest rate we can find for that loan.
WOOOOOOOOO!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Search Continues
Well even taking into account the past two years incomes, we still have too much money (still the stupidest thing ever, in my opinion). And we're continuing to look at houses in the area. We went up to look this afternoon at about seven of them and they ranged from the hideously overpriced, tiny things in terrible locations to the pretty dang good! Well, one of them was anyways.
We'll be putting in a bid for the house on Olympic Street on Monday, squeezing it in on top of two FHA backed buyers who want to move in asap so hopefully our more stable conventional loan with 20% down and willingness to work with the seller's timeline will work in our favor. The seller is apparently still clearing up some title issues before he's clear to sell and is looking at more of a 30-45 day wait before closing. Which we'd be more than happy with. We could go 60 even and be happy. But Seth really loves this house. It's a split level with four bedrooms in a very quiet and family friendly neighborhood a mile and a half from the metro. The neighbor next door had a 5ish year old kid playing outside when we were there.
The back yard also looks out on a stretch of the Matthew Henson State Park. Never heard of it? Me neither. But it makes the house feel more private and could be nice if we clear out some of the fallen branches and brush back there. It's not a very well maintained park apparently. At least on our end of it. A little googlefu revealed, however, that there is a running/walking trail back there through it so perhaps a little trailblazing from the backyard could link up with it. That'd be nice. Or there's an official entrance around the block somewhere I'm sure. It meets up with the Rock Creek trail system a couple miles away as well so if Seth gets a bike to go to the metro on every morning then we could go biking on it all through the area!
So the other thing I did this week in preparation of going house hunting was do a wee bit of shopping. I picked up a new minicamcorder, the handheld sort. It's the Kodak Playtouch.
I'd gone into Best Buy having intended to buy this model's predecessor since their website said they had it in stock and they had a display model on the shelf. However, as it turned out they'd gotten rid of their stock since this one had just been released and hadn't bothered taking the display off their shelf. So! Using my incredible bargaining powers I got the new model for the old one's price. (Saving $30) I gleefully made off with my shiny new toy, brought it home, busted out the user manual, plugged it in... and nothing happened. Wouldn't turn on. Went back to best buy, got it exchanged for one that did work. (I made them check it before I left the store with it.) And then talked them into giving me a discount on an 8GB SD chip for it. Turned out it was on sale for less than the discount they were going to give me, but lesson learned. Express mild displeasure at Best Buy and the manager will likely knock the price down for you. The service was pretty great and the return process was easier, but I still spent more time at Best Buy in one day than I like to.
So here are the videos and a few pictures I took with it. In 1080p even! On that itty bitty camera! It's pretty incredible. I am not an expert camera person and probably should have turned on the digital stabilization feature (oops >.>) while taping too... so please forgive my shaky video and seizure inducing testing of the zoom button in the backyard tour the second time we went through the house. Note to self, don't try to use the zoom while filming. This is what happened when I was watching it afterwards: Youtube: "Thudthudthudthud"
Seth: "Marianne, what IS that?"
Me: "The zoom?"
Seth: *facepalm*
First Walk Through Part I
First Walk Through Part II
Second Walk Through Inside
Second Walk Through Outside
And here's one area we found after I'd finished filming: In the wash room there's a half door and behind it... the Narnia of Storage. Seriously. That picture doesn't even do the size of that crawl space justice. It's ginormous, as big as half of the house with shelves build all along the right wall that you can see the corner of in the upper right hand corner. It'd be a pain to get at, but for things like, say, the fake Christmas Tree we own that may not get used again once I have my own house to get a real tree for, and things that only need to be pulled out once a year or so? Still, I'll probably make Seth put stuff in there and get stuff out. Dust and spiders you know.
We'll be putting in a bid for the house on Olympic Street on Monday, squeezing it in on top of two FHA backed buyers who want to move in asap so hopefully our more stable conventional loan with 20% down and willingness to work with the seller's timeline will work in our favor. The seller is apparently still clearing up some title issues before he's clear to sell and is looking at more of a 30-45 day wait before closing. Which we'd be more than happy with. We could go 60 even and be happy. But Seth really loves this house. It's a split level with four bedrooms in a very quiet and family friendly neighborhood a mile and a half from the metro. The neighbor next door had a 5ish year old kid playing outside when we were there.
The back yard also looks out on a stretch of the Matthew Henson State Park. Never heard of it? Me neither. But it makes the house feel more private and could be nice if we clear out some of the fallen branches and brush back there. It's not a very well maintained park apparently. At least on our end of it. A little googlefu revealed, however, that there is a running/walking trail back there through it so perhaps a little trailblazing from the backyard could link up with it. That'd be nice. Or there's an official entrance around the block somewhere I'm sure. It meets up with the Rock Creek trail system a couple miles away as well so if Seth gets a bike to go to the metro on every morning then we could go biking on it all through the area!
So the other thing I did this week in preparation of going house hunting was do a wee bit of shopping. I picked up a new minicamcorder, the handheld sort. It's the Kodak Playtouch.
I'd gone into Best Buy having intended to buy this model's predecessor since their website said they had it in stock and they had a display model on the shelf. However, as it turned out they'd gotten rid of their stock since this one had just been released and hadn't bothered taking the display off their shelf. So! Using my incredible bargaining powers I got the new model for the old one's price. (Saving $30) I gleefully made off with my shiny new toy, brought it home, busted out the user manual, plugged it in... and nothing happened. Wouldn't turn on. Went back to best buy, got it exchanged for one that did work. (I made them check it before I left the store with it.) And then talked them into giving me a discount on an 8GB SD chip for it. Turned out it was on sale for less than the discount they were going to give me, but lesson learned. Express mild displeasure at Best Buy and the manager will likely knock the price down for you. The service was pretty great and the return process was easier, but I still spent more time at Best Buy in one day than I like to.
So here are the videos and a few pictures I took with it. In 1080p even! On that itty bitty camera! It's pretty incredible. I am not an expert camera person and probably should have turned on the digital stabilization feature (oops >.>) while taping too... so please forgive my shaky video and seizure inducing testing of the zoom button in the backyard tour the second time we went through the house. Note to self, don't try to use the zoom while filming. This is what happened when I was watching it afterwards: Youtube: "Thudthudthudthud"
Seth: "Marianne, what IS that?"
Me: "The zoom?"
Seth: *facepalm*
First Walk Through Part I
First Walk Through Part II
Second Walk Through Inside
Second Walk Through Outside
And here's one area we found after I'd finished filming: In the wash room there's a half door and behind it... the Narnia of Storage. Seriously. That picture doesn't even do the size of that crawl space justice. It's ginormous, as big as half of the house with shelves build all along the right wall that you can see the corner of in the upper right hand corner. It'd be a pain to get at, but for things like, say, the fake Christmas Tree we own that may not get used again once I have my own house to get a real tree for, and things that only need to be pulled out once a year or so? Still, I'll probably make Seth put stuff in there and get stuff out. Dust and spiders you know.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Aaaaand the jerk
So apparently the county is having second thoughts now. Probably because no one who qualifies for the house can afford it and they're (hopefully) getting desperate. If our average income for the past two years is below the arbitrary line they drew (which I'm pretty sure it is since Seth got a nice raise this year) then we may be able to get it!
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