The House Hunters Thread

[Blenheim]

RHB - Wow, you've made so much progress in such little time! It looks great.

DCGator - that sounds great!

NEL - Ugh, I hate matching paint. With the two rooms that you have left, if there are only a couple of spots that you're wanting to cover and they're limited to 1-2 walls, you could find a really-close-but-not-exact match and then just paint those walls. I've done that before and I don't think anyone else noticed.


Deadline was 5 pm yesterday. By yesterday night, I think DH was coming to terms with not getting the house. And then today at around 11:30, the bank made a counter-offer. I called that one. I have a feeling that they are trying to toy with us emotionally to get us to give in. (Unfortunately for them, I can be super stubborn.) The latest counter was for $4,900 over our initial offer, same concessions, 2 year home warranty. It included a $1500 incentive for our realtor and her company. She suggested that, if we're interested, we counter again, for $3,400 over our initial offer and no realtor incentive. The net to the bank would be the same. The home warranty's worth $1,100, and so overall this is about $2,300 over our initial offer which did not include a home warranty. I think I can live with that. I put a deadline of 5 pm Friday on the counter, so I'm expecting to hear from them on Saturday afternoon...

This process has been going on for 13 days. Crazy.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Blenheim!! I wanted to check in with you yesterday, but thought I'd give it another day. Then I saw you posted early this morning!!

So the bank finally countered when manipulating you into bidding more didn't work. Well played on your part. With your counter offer, the bottom line for the bank is the exact same, so if they don't accept I'll be completley surprised. I think this might be the light at the end of the tunnel After 13 days of negotiating, it's time to be done! I just hope they actually get back to you by your deadline this time. If they simply accept, there is no reason to drag it on. I know you won't feel better until they finally accept, so they need to just need to do it already!

Keep us updated, of course!

 

[dcgator]

RHB - Wow, you've made so much progress in such little time! It looks great.

DCGator - that sounds great!

Deadline was 5 pm yesterday. By yesterday night, I think DH was coming to terms with not getting the house. And then today at around 11:30, the bank made a counter-offer. I called that one. I have a feeling that they are trying to toy with us emotionally to get us to give in. (Unfortunately for them, I can be super stubborn.) The latest counter was for $4,900 over our initial offer, same concessions, 2 year home warranty. It included a $1500 incentive for our realtor and her company. She suggested that, if we're interested, we counter again, for $3,400 over our initial offer and no realtor incentive. The net to the bank would be the same. The home warranty's worth $1,100, and so overall this is about $2,300 over our initial offer which did not include a home warranty. I think I can live with that. I put a deadline of 5 pm Friday on the counter, so I'm expecting to hear from them on Saturday afternoon...

This process has been going on for 13 days. Crazy.

Blenheim - That is great that the bank is playing ball! Good for you for sticking to your guns And, unless the bank is dumb, I think they will take your offer. Please let us know when they do though. Good luck!

By the way, I will send Ella an email with my email for you and you are welcome to email me once you get it.

 

[Blenheim]

You guys are not going to believe this: they turned down our offer. Evidently their purchase price counter is the lowest that they can go and have their books work out. They have some flexibility with selling expenses as that goes in a different category on the books, but there's a set percent that they can't go over for seller assist with closing costs and they're already paying for 2 years warranty, and while they are fine with $1500 going to the realtor, they say that they just cannot give us more money. They are fine with us waiving the realtor bonus though. Our realtor said that if we get a signed contract with that latest offer from them, then she will do paperwork on the back end to have the realtor bonus go to us at closing. So,.. we're going that route! Ridiculous.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Okay, so the good news is that it sounds like you've reached an agreement with the bank. So YAY for finally settling on a price!!!

Obviously you know what's coming next...it's completely ridiculous that they couldn't accept your offer when the bottom line for them was the EXACT SAME! It sounds like your realtor is working really hard for you guys--and I'm glad she put in that realtor incentive in the first place since it will eventually be money in your pocket. You guys have already jumped through hoops to get here, so I'm just hoping nad praying that the rest of the process is smooth.

So with a short sale, what's next? You still have the inspection next, right?

 

[Blenheim]

I agree that it's completely ridiculous!

The next step is getting a ratified contract... The bank involved has wanted to do all negotations via email, which we've been going with even though our realtor, DH and me all prefer to do things more formally, and so we don't have anything right now with signatures on it. They say that they're drawing it up and we should have it within a couple of days to sign. I feel like they're trying to leave themselves an out just in case they get a better offer this weekend, although FIL thinks that because we do have communication in writing (albeit without signatures) that they made us that counteroffer and that we accepted the counteroffer, that we could still sue if they back out at this point. Who knows.

After the ratified contract, we have to get the appraisal and all inspections done - just like a normal sale. (BTW, it's a foreclosure, so slightly different than a short sale, although my guess is that the general procedure would be the same at this point.) It's being sold in as-is condition, so if anything major comes up, we'd need to re-evaluate if we want it at all.

 

[Steel]

I agree that it's completely ridiculous!

The next step is getting a ratified contract... The bank involved has wanted to do all negotations via email, which we've been going with even though our realtor, DH and me all prefer to do things more formally, and so we don't have anything right now with signatures on it. They say that they're drawing it up and we should have it within a couple of days to sign. I feel like they're trying to leave themselves an out just in case they get a better offer this weekend, although FIL thinks that because we do have communication in writing (albeit without signatures) that they made us that counteroffer and that we accepted the counteroffer, that we could still sue if they back out at this point. Who knows.

After the ratified contract, we have to get the appraisal and all inspections done - just like a normal sale. (BTW, it's a foreclosure, so slightly different than a short sale, although my guess is that the general procedure would be the same at this point.) It's being sold in as-is condition, so if anything major comes up, we'd need to re-evaluate if we want it at all.

You seem so pensive; are you guys happy if you get the house or is it purely a logistical move?

 

[Blenheim]

Reading back over that I do sound a bit negative, don't I? I'm personally not in love with the house - although I honestly doubt that I'd be head over heels about anything in our price range - but it has a lot of the important things that we're looking for (good school district, good neighborhood, good lot, good layout, in our price range) and I think that with a little work, I could come to really like it. DH is in love with it and I'm having to take on the role of the rational person between the two of us, which is probably part of why I sound the way I do. I know that the inspection is going to turn up some things and while a certain dollar limit's ok, I don't want us to get in over our head if it comes back with a bunch of stuff, you know? Plus the initial negotation stage is stretching on soooo long - 16 days and counting. It's getting really tiring!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Blenheim, I completely understand where you are coming from. When one spouse is in love with a house it does seem to put pressure on the other spouse to be the voice of reason. For such a large purchase, you want to be smart. If anything huge pops up in the inspection, you don't want to disregard it just because you've already fallen in love with the house. I do think that as you get closer to closing, it will become more exciting. Oh, and sorry that I said short sale--I meant foreclosure and completely typed the wrong thing. Did you guys already sign your final contract?

 

[NewEnglandLady]

I took some pics of the bedroom this morning, then I took a few pics of other future projects in the house. Here are the bedroom pics--I just ordered a new duvet from West Elm that hasn't come in yet, but I didn't want to keep putting off posting pics. I finally got the new (longer) curtains for one window yesterday, so I put them up. At least the curtains are all set--now I just have to decorate the rest of the room. I'm hoping to replace the Ikea dresser and night stands with antiques in the next month or so.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Here are a coupe of pics of the kitchen, which is the only other room that is somewhat done. Again, I hope to start adding some antiques to this room (eventually replacing the dining room table). I really love the fireplace--there is a pot stand in it from the 1700's where they used to hang the pots for boiling. Can you imagine having to cook your entire dinner over that fireplace? And that's a bread oven in the fireplace, which was a real modern convenience then.

Off one side of the kitchen is a full bath and our living room. Off the other side of the kitchen is the office and a family room (future kids' play room, I'm assuming--right now it's the dogs' room). Oh, and I'll attach a pic of the mud room since Bo is in it.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Okay, this is the last bunch of pics, I promise. These are sort of the "future projects". I feel like the whole house is a future project, but I'm fine with the downstairs bathroom, living room, family room, office and master suite for now. I just need to order curtains and decorate those rooms. These are the bigger projects:

First is the nursery. For now it's white and I really like the room, but we'll obviously be painting and filling that room when we get pregnant. It's the room closest to the master, which is why it's designated as the nursery, but I also like the original wood walls. And there aren't any squeaky boards in that room. (Oops, I couldn't add it, I'll post it separately).

Second is the guest room. Notice the grey bedspread? I bought it hoping it would work in the master, but it wasn't the right shade of grey... I think I'm just going to paint this room, but I'm not in a huge hurry. You can sort of see old bathroom from that pic--the bathroom needs a complete overhaul. It's in our 5-year plan. The bathroom is perfectly functional as is, so there isn't a huge rush, it's just configured awkwardly and has a blue bathtub. I should have taken a pic.

Third is another spare bedroom. We'd like to add a dormer to this room (the guest bedroom has a wide dormer and it adds a lot of space. We also want to expose the beams in the ceiling to give it more height. This room won't be used for a LONG time, so again, no big hurry.

Finally--the yard. The yard needs help. You can see that I've been working in it his weekend--as soon as I post this I'm going to go out and work on it some more, haha. I love the back yard, it just needs some TLC. I'm also posting a pic of the front yard. You see that rope swing? Yeah, I swing on it all the time. I love that swing!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Okay, I lied. I have to re-post the future nursery pics.

 

[Blenheim]

NEL - still nothing from the bank! This is the other reason why I'm trying not to get too emotionally involved at this point; I'd drive myself crazy. I'm sure that I'll get a lot more excited after the inspection and appraisal are over.

Your bedroom looks so restful. I love the exposed beams in the DR ceiling and those great wood floors.

 

[Clairitek]

NEL- I LOVE love LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE your house! Makes me want to move back to Rhode Island so badly! Keep posting pics because I really enjoy seeing what youre doing to it! Love those super wide floor boards as well. Sigh... so lovely!

Blen- Best of luck in the rest of this house business.


For anyone who is following, my house still hasn't sold. DH won't join me on the West Coast (after PhD is done) until it does sell, so send some buyers to SE Pennsylvania!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Claritek, I've been wondering if you've gotten any nibbles on the house. Sorry to hear it hasn't sold, but am sending you tons and tons of house-selling dust!!

 

[zoebartlett]

C-tek -- I hope your hosue sells soon!

NEL -- I LOVE your house and the yard. I can see why you chose it -- it's gorgeous.

Blenheim -- I hope you hear something from the bank soon!

Question for you girls: Where do you look for artwork for your house? We have a lot of prints that we haven't gotten around to hanging up yet, but I'm kind of tired of some of them. I've looked at Home Goods, Target, and Marshalls, but I haven't found anything I love. I do have a few pieces from local artists, and I love that you can't just pick them up anywhere, but I'd like other pieces too. Any ideas?

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

NEL, I love the house! It reminds me so much of my dad's. His is a pre-rev period house so it has the great little quirks yours has like the fireplaces and wide pine plank floors.

Zoe-We're really into b/w photography so that's what most of our wall art is. We get some from Homegoods and then some are pictures we've taken and made prints of ourselves. I also buy an Ansel Adam's calendar every year and then frame the prints in inexpensive frames from Ikea. They're usually small, like 8 x 10s, but the look really nice clustered together in horizontal or vertical rows. Oh! Ikea is another great place to get inexpensive art (and there's a Boston Interiors right near there too!).

The hardest part about wall art for us is hanging it. We just finished hanging all of ours within the last two months and we've been in our place since last October. So you're not alone!

 

[zoebartlett]

Thanks HH! We went to Boston Interiors yesterday (the one in Saugus) and we really did like a few pieces. We didn't get anything but we'll probably go back. By the way, we saw those metal leaf things that I wrote about earlier (BI has them), and I like them but they're smaller than what we're looking for. The price is better than the ones at C&B but we like the ones at C&B better. So for now those are on the back burner.

I love hanging art work but it's a chore to find the RIGHT pieces sometimes. I keep forgetting about IKEA since there's not one near us. I think I'll suggest a trip there next weekend and see if my husband can agree. I do love black and white photography and using calendars is a great idea.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Zoe, don't you wish there was some type of event in the area which featured local artists? The area above our fireplace is empty and I would really like to hang an original piece from a local artist there...there are a few local artists and I stopped by a gallery in a neighboring town once, but I didn't love the work and the prices were really, really high. I need some starving artist's work, haha.

I also really like HH's idea of using personal prints. In the hallway outside of our bedroom I'm planning to hang 20 - 30 framed landscape photos from various vacations over the years. I like the idea of that hallway being filled with memories that DH and I created together. Now I just need to do it...

I also love HH's idea of the Ansel Adams pieces. I really love Amsel Adams (and several Yosemite prints will certainly be hanging on the "vacation memory" wall).

I've also been scouring antique stores lately. I really want to hang some antique signs/pieces. I do have one print of a Newfoundland from the 1880's (and just ordered a second Newfoundland print this morning). I love the way old signs and prints look.

 

[ts44]

Zoe if you have a World Market by you, I very often have luck finding a nice print in their loose print section and then finding a good frame and mat for it there as well. Much better pricing than buying it assembled. I have also cut my own mats as well, but you need a steady hand for that and a special cutter to bevel the inner edge. In any case, they nearly always seem to be running a sale and they have wall art as well!

 

[iheartscience]

Hey Zoe, my husband was a fine arts major in college and then later worked at a custom frame shop, so we have tons of framed original art by his friends and him, as well as some framed prints. We also got a fantastic signed print from a pretty well-known artist for a wedding gift.

I've bought several prints since we bought our new house, too-I have about 5 right now waiting to get framed. I found many of them on Etsy as well as through Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy. I can post some links to some different sites when I get home and have my bookmarks handy.

If you don't want to spend the money for custom framing I'd suggest looking at the different sizes of Ribba frames at IKEA and trying to get prints that will fit. Also, some of the larger Ribba frames have plexiglass instead of real glass, but it's surprisingly inexpensive to get that switched for real glass at a frame shop. There are nice ready made frames and mats available at Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and I think West Elm, too.

 

[iheartscience]

Zoe-found some links to a few place I've ordered prints from:

http://www.somagallery.co.uk/shop/shopmain.html

http://www.keepcalmgallery.com/

http://www.20x200.com/

 

[zoebartlett]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Maybe I should have started a new thread; I didn't mean to threadjack this one.

NEL -- I really love going to local artists' shows, and I have several prints from one of my favorite artists. She paints houses, landscapes, and buildings around my small hometown, and her work is gorgeous. I recently heard that although she still paints, she isn't doing shows anymore. That's too bad, but I really should branch out anyway. I already have about 5 pieces from her. I'm looking forward to the spring, when I know there will be an art show near here.

You know, I have a ton of landscape pictures from our trip to Ireland 6 years ago that I had meant to frame, but I kind of forgot about. I'll have to dig through a box to find them, but that will be my next project. I also love the idea of using black and white photography. I've actually been on the hunt for a specific B&W print that I saw in a store once but didn't pick up. Darn!

Ts -- we don't have a World Market here but I'll look on their site anyway. Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks Thing2! I'd love to see check out the sites you mentioned if you have time to post them. I usually go to this one place near my house to get things framed, but it costs a small fortune. I love how the prints turn out, but I really should try to just do it myself and save some $.

 

[Blenheim]

Still no ratified contract...

C-tek - I'm sending lots of good house-selling vibes and dust your way!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Blenheim, grrrrr!

What is taking so long on their end? I'm assuming this is a standard contract, not something they have to create from scratch? Is this contract the same as a Purchase and Sales agreement? Do you have dates that you have to adhere to for meeting your mortgage commitment and closing? Is it something your lawyer is supposed to review? Regardless, they need to get it to you because they're holding everything up. And they said you'd have it 5 days ago! I'm sure if you were 5 days late with payment they wouldn't be too happy...

 

[zoebartlett]

Thanks Thing! I really like some of the prints on those sites. I have a few bookmarked, so I'll see what my husband thinks later on.

Blenheim -- I'm STILL crossing my fingers for you. A friend of mine bought a house that was a short sale, and it took forever to get the bank to agree and then it took even longer for them to actually close. But they did, and now they're in a really great house. Hopefully the process won't take quite so long for you, but it might pay off in the end even if it does.

 

[Tacori E-ring]

I don't read this thread very often so this may have already been discussed, but Blen, is it a short sale? If so it can take MONTHS to hear an answer. 16 days is quick! Trust me.

NEL, pretty house!

 

[Blenheim]

Tacori - foreclosure, so I thought they were supposed to take almost-normal amounts of time? We had agreed to basic terms (purchase price, closing cost assistance, warranty, realtor fees, closing date) on something like Thursday or Friday last week and they said that they just needed to put together some paperwork for us to sign, which is why I've been getting impatient.


Well, at 4:56 pm today, we got the paperwork from the bank. There are 10 pages of addendums that they want us to sign. Aaand, this is why I've been trying to be unemotional about the process. I'm not signing all of them. By the time that I called our realtor at 5:30 to discuss, she had already let the listing agent know that she wasn't going to let us sign some of the addendums. LOL. Go realtor. We still need to talk to her about some of our questions, though.

My biggest concerns (in no particular order)-

They will not pay any HOA fees before they took possession of the home. We don't know right now how much the prior owner owed the HOA, but I will assume that if they foreclosed on the house, then they probably weren't paying their dues. This may mean that there's not a clean title (if the HOA placed a lien on the home) and that the bank won't pay the money to get the unencumbered title.... Need to discuss this one further with realtor. It could kill the deal.

They had previously agreed to pay for $x in closing costs PLUS a home warranty, and the language of the addendums said that that they would pay no more than $x of our closing costs, to include "FHA or VA non-allowables, non-recurring closing costs, discount points, loan origination fees, other customary and reasonable lender fees and pre-paid expenses, survey, appraisal, AND HOME WARRANTY."

They want us to sign off that we received the results of a termite inspection on 7/21. This was news to us as well as to our realtor. Never received. Not signing. Although, if they send us a copy of it, then I'll be glad to sign with a different date on the form.

If the bank backs out for any reason whatsoever, they would not be responsible for more than $1000 to us. I feel like they're currently yanking us around while hoping to get a better offer, and I don't want to pay inspectors, lawyers, etc and then have them back out b/c they got an offer for $5k more. And they seem to be setting things up so that it would be very easy for them to do just that

"In the event the inspection reveals material deficiencies, Purchaser may cancel the Contract of Sale." Need to talk to realtor (or lawyer?) about what exactly constitutes material deficiency. If the foundation is intact and there is no toxic mold but it needs more work than we're comfortable with given the purchase price, we want to reserve the right to back out.

It looks like these were all standardized forms for the bank with just our names and the property address filled in (so why did they take 6 days to fill out?!), and so I'm not sure if we're going to be able to come to a compromise on things. Fingers crossed...


ETA - NEL - The closing date is supposed to be 9/10, but our realtor says that banks can usually work with 30 days from ratification to closing so we're still okay (for now...). This is different than the purchase and sales agreement and generally not something a lawyer would need to look over - they tend to get involved a little bit later in the process here.

 

[Tacori E-ring]

foreclosure on the mls? I believe all liens have to be paid by the lender in order to have a clear title. Your closing attorney HAS to research this. Banks are slammed right now. We just bought a short sale which took 3 months. Foreclosures are no different. They have people working round the clock to handle all of the deals. Usually banked own houses are sold as is. At least in our area. Good luck! Hope things go smoothly.