After looking at at least 2 dozen houses, making more than half a dozen offers, having the sellers reject our offer then coming back later and accepting it, jumping through too many hoops for loan approval and having the bank lose our cashiers check, we finally closed on a house we really like.

It's fairly small by current standards, but it's in a nice location and it's well upgraded.

Details:
1300 sf
3 bedrooms
2 full baths
2 car detached garage.

We don't get the keys until Friday and we're getting the wood floor refinished and crown molding installed before we move in, so we won't actually move for about another 2 weeks.

Pics to come early next week.

 

Congrats! Is this your 1st? I'm a realtor out of Chicago & I know there are tons of awesome deals out there. Good luck.

 

Congrats!! I hope to be making a thread just like this soon.

Also funny because we had many of the same problems and are also thinking about doing the floors before we move in as well.

 

Congrats. Bought my first home in June.

 

Thanks all.

We actually both own condos, but this will be our first single family detached home and our first home that we bought together. Sappy, I know.

Luv - looking forward to your post!

 

Contract is signed, just didn't want to say anything until the closing is done.

Are you selling both your condos?

 

I was the same way. I made mention a couple of times, but didn't want to make a thread until all was said and done.

We're keeping both condos as rentals. One is currently tenant occupied and the one we live in now should be ready to rent but Feb 1. We were planning on selling originally - actually had the other condo listed before - but that was before the housing market went south.

 

Yeah, probably better to keep them and rent them out, at least for now. You can always sell when things pick up. As long as you have decent tenants, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle to keep them as income properties.

 

Congratulations, moe!

 

Sweet! Congrats!!

I can't tell you how many houses I looked at before buying where I live now. Too many to count. Too many contracts to count. However, looking back on everything I'm very glad I went through the process.

When will you have pictures of the new place?

 

Congrats moe!!




How many electrical questions should I be expecting in the near future?

 

Luv - The rented condo has less than 10 years left on the loan, so that one will probably stay as an income property. We may end up selling the one we currently live in down the road.

wndr - Thanks!

thunder - pics should be up by early next week.

scott - I actually spared you from some electrical questions from the inspection on this one, but I'm sure I'll come up with plenty more. I do have to figure out how to get power to a TV that will be mounted on a wall with no outlets.

 

A wall with no outlets?!!??






Post anything you got and I'll see what I can do from here. As weird as it sounds, since I'm not an Electrician anymore I kind of miss the thinking part of it all, so it's nice to figure some stuff out once in a while. And if you post a thread and I don't see it let me know...sometimes I forget to come in H&G

 

Congrats!!!

 

Great News.
Christmas should be great fun this year.

 

 

first off.. congrats!!!

if it is on 1st fl and u have a basement
if it is on 2nd fl and u have an attic

anything else

 

Thanks again all! We hope to be settled by Christmas, but Thanksgiving is going to be a mess.

Scott - There's a pic from the inspection I need to post for you to give you a

Thanks. It's on the first floor with a crawl space below and an attic above (no second story or basement). I don't think it will be too difficult, but can't just use the standard PowerBridge solution. Oh well.

 

This was a "junction box" the inspector found under the crawl space:



Nice use of a 35mm film canister. Turns out it was only for low-voltage lighting that was no longer in use, but still pretty cheesy.

 

Congrats!

 

Ha, that made me chuckle. Our inspection is next Wednesday. Keeping my fingers crossed it goes ok.

 

Haha

Hopefully this freak didn't do any other DIY wiring projects

 

sweet

 

Congrats Moe ~ enjoy the move!

 

congratz dude...how high was ur credit score? i w8ing for mine to go up in the end of dec so i can start looking for a house...how much did u put down?

 

Moeronn congratulations on closing the deal Its really good that you didn't have to sell your condos to get the house. When market revives you can always make out better.

 

Congratulations on getting the place.

When we got our place 2 months ago, I found out the guy who lived here before was a

Good luck with everything!

 

Thanks guys!

We moved a bunch of stuff into the garage yesterday and today. The floors have been sanded, stained and sealed. Will be getting 3 coats of poly on it. Should be able to walk on them by Thursday, but will wait until Friday or Saturday to move anything major into the house.

Thanks. My wife and I were both around 760. We went FHA, so 3.5% down. The loan process is WAY more complicated and time consuming now than it was a few years ago. So much more paperwork and documentation to send it.

Thanks. It seems that most things were done well, but every now and then we run into some items. Like when they took out the floor heater and put in new wood, they didn't really support it well so it flexes quite a bit. I'll reinforce it from underneath after we get settled in.

BTW, I did take some pics before they started on the floors (except I forgot to take a pic of the area they replaced the carpet with wood) and will post soon. Don't know where the camera went.

 

Glad yours worked out it's a rough rollercoaster.

Last monday, was the day I was signing all the documents with the notary for my first home. Noticed the balance owed on the sheet from the title company was about 8k more than I expected. Find out the 3% back for closing costs had been removed from the contract and agents from both parties didn't see it on the short sale approval from the lender. 99.9% complete and I'm back at square one. That was a tough decision to make with my wife but we feel good about it and realize there were alot of things we didn't like about the house afterall. Even offered to go through with it if the agents gave .5% up in commission since it was their fault and they refused. Oh well I was happy to see them get nothing.

 

Short sales are not for the faint of heart. We were going after one and the seller kept thinking he could work something out with the bank and went back and forth about actually doing a short sale. The day before we agreed to a price on our current house, the short sale finally decided to sell and they asked for Best and Final Offers (BAFO). We thought about it, but didn't even submit. We closed and that one still shows as backup offers, so we don't even know if the bank has accepted anything. Glad we didn't go after it or we would still be waiting.

 

Any news?

 

A little later than expected, but here are some quick pics (p&s) from before and during the wood refinishing. Still need to take some after pics and front of the house. Will try and use a wider lens next time, too.

Living Room:


Kithen 1:


Kitchen 2:


Kitchen 3:


Living Room to Hall Threshhold (before):


Living Room to Hall Threshhold (repaired):


MBR Hall/Closet (was carpet):


Hall Bath 1:


Hall Bath 2:


Backyard (garage on left):


BTW - since when are we not allowed to use the flickr HTML code to post pics?

 

Nice kitchen..

 

Love the cabinets in the kitchen

 

The kitchen and baths really helped sell the place to us.

I <3 self close drawers.

 

Appliances look nice. Got anything nice in the built in cooler?

 

They are pretty near top of the line, but I didn't know that until after we made the offer. They weren't planning on leaving the fridge, but we got them to include it.

Nothing in the cooler yet. Will most likely hold some Smirnoff drinks for the wife along with beer for me and sodas. We aren't big wine drinkers.

 

That kitchen is really nice! Congrats!

 

The only thing that would bother me about the kitchen is the lack of any counter space next to the stove. Otherwise it is pretty awesome.

 

That is a definite drawback. We'll probably get a butcher block, rolling cart that we can put next to the stove when we cook.