January29, 2006

More stuff slowly selling on Ebay. Today's hot item(s) are 6 older but unworn cycling jerseys that I have from 2000. Six of them. We'll see where they end up.

January 28, 2006

Things are moving along. The Radon test results came back - finally! They were just a little over 1.0 so that's all good and we are going ahead with the purchase. Contracts arrived at our attorney from teh seller's attorney and we are reading them over along with an addendum that our attorney added in response to some things in the inspection report (bearing in mind that we are buying it in "as is" condition). Still have to get the water turned on and tested, plumbing and water heater checked.
Now I just have to call our 3 contacts for final mortgage rate offers as Bob is in Detroit working the SuperBowl. Still can't decide whether to do lendingtree.com as well? Then we'll try and block off some time with Bob Tuesday a.m. to go over the contracts with our attorney as we have to have that back to the seller's attorney by next Friday.
Health and building depts at City Hall have no plans and no permits/COs so we need to check if legally you had to file them back in 1951 (built), '55 (FR + BA added), '60 (screened-in rear porch added), '65 (MBR, MBA, DR, office, rear stair, garage, attic, front porch added) and '88 (fence erected on side of property line). There was a field card so it exists in someone's system.
Getting very close.

January 23, 2006

Dig those cars!

January 23, 2006

Gosh darn! Who'd have thought that a bag of old shirts would fetch $180 on Ebay! There's a couple of items that I listed this weekend that will close next weekend so maybe, just maybe we'll hit $200 for the faucet fund. Bob couldn't believe it. And that OLN crew shirt ... the top seller... went for $41! (Which is kind of wierd because they could've done the "Buy it Now" for $9.99.) Go figure but thanks anyhoo!

January22nd, 2006

We've started thinning through our stuff as joining one house and one apartment is not going to be easy. Last wekk Bob and I went through his vast wardrobe. We got rid of 4-5 large black garbage bags of clothes to go to donation and anything that was in the donation pile that was TV/sports logo'd I put on Ebay - someone somewhere surely wants to buy an OLN Tour de France crew shirt from 2002? He has an incredible array of stuff. Hottest items seem to be his many UFC t-shirts. We've called the auction funds the "faucet fund" as we both liked this groovy faucet that IKEA has for $249! Auction ends later this afternoon. Stay tuned!

January 21st, 2006

Well we had the full inspection last Thursday. It confirmed some things that we had been told already in the mini inspection that we had prior to making an offer. Basically they are things that you would exepct in a 50-year old house that probably hasn't had serious maintenance in 15 years and has been empty for 7 months. There's poor drainage (from clogged gutters and bad grading) and some water leakage in places like the chimney flashing and some rotted wood (base of garage frame and one window sill). Some stuff to bring it up to code (no GFCIs etc) but nothing huge. There's certainly plenty of work but I am still excited about getting in there plus checking my rental lease - I had forgotten all about the $2,000 secutiry deposit I paid - so that'll buy a few repairs!!

Bob is on the road so he will read the inspection tonight and then we'll confer. We want to close on Feb 24th so if we decide to go ahead I can chat with our broker tomorrow and then shop for mortgages Monday and Tuesday. A local bank - Ridgefield Bank - has given us the best offer so far - if they come through with the 2nd mortgage for just prime seeing as I have a brokerage account with them.

So I've been making up a project list and looking at the new kitchen plan and trying to read up on home repair! We both want to just get in and get on with it. Still keeping fingers crossed as don't want the sale to fall through.

January 17th, 2006

Well, well, well. Much to our (and our broker's) surprise our offer was accepted, even though it was lower than an offer that we know they turned down in November. I guess some of it was the timing - the owners (Frank and June) are older and don't want to go back and forth with negotiating so they said they would come back to us with an "as is" price that they would accept. They were very concerned about who bought the house - wanting someone who would love the house as much as they did. We had asked on the offer for copies of some historical photos of the house that they had on display that showed them adding the FR and the DR over the years. Apparently they liked that and came back and said that the "as is" price would be our offer.

Yikes! We had expected some back and forth and negotiating so we were a little caught off guard. So we are going ahead with a full inspection this Thursday - the value of the pre-inspection kind of pays off as we are fairly confident that there's nothing too heinous. (The pre-inspection turned up a joist missing a header in the FR and the fact that the screened in porch will need a new roof soon - it's asphalt tile.) That was pretty much it.

So now I am calling a few places for mortgage rates and Bob is calling lawyers. Part of his work benefits include legal services which he signed up for for like $5 / month. So we will get the legal services for free I believe. So it's been very exciting and Bob now calls me and asks "Hello, is it possible to speak to the homeowner?" Wise-acre.

January 15th, 2006

A week ago I took Bob to see the green Colonial - calling at the yellow Cape in Brookfield on the way for some perspective. The Cape was having an open house - it was a nice clean-lined house just too small.
So off we went to the green Colonial to meet Ginny. Long story short - Bob likes it alot - even though the kitchen is dire and only 11 x 9. We couldn't quite understand the electricla panels in thebasement and had other questions so we drew up a list of 30 questions for Ginny to ask the seller's agent and also to get the seller's disclosure that wasn't in the house with the packet.

Got the answers from Ginny Monday and the seller's disclosure that tells us that it's been on the market since early-July when they were asking 409k. It came off the market and then back on in early-Nov at 389k. They didn't really answer much as the seller's daughter is representing the seller's so there seems to be some info loss in there somewhere. The seller's disclosure wasn't fully completed which gave me a somewhat uneasy feeling.

We like the house - there will be plenty of work. Not so much remodelling but at least 2 rooms have that 1/4" plywood sheathing on the walls and that will eventually need to get ripped out and re-sheetrocked. Anyhoo - we decided to get a mini-inspection before making the final decision to make an offer.

Mini-inspection happened Friday afternoon and we got the OK on the house - there's a few things to fix but no horrendous nightmares.

So we've put in an offer! Spoke to a nice guy at Coldwell Banker Mortgage who did our pre-approval letter and also talked us through estimated costs for closing. All in all it was very reassuring to talk with him and find out that our monthly "nut" was less than we had thought.

We expect the offer to get turned down but to hopefully give us a good place to negotiate from. We'll see. It's exciting but we don't want to get our hopes up too high in case we don't get the house.

January 5, 2006

Brookfield, CT. Cape. $369,900. 1600 sq.ft.
Viewed this one the other afternoon. Cute cape in a nice litle neighbourhood up near Candlewood Lake. Someone will no doubt like it as it's ready to go but the kitchen was only 8 x 8 with really no room to expand. Upstairs there were 2 BRs with a jack-and-jill bathroom. A good use of space but I think too small and tight for us - not much closet space. There was a finished basement room downstairs but personally I think that's just not space that you'll use - it needs to be on the main level or upstairs. I have an unfinished basement where I rent now and I pop in and out all the time but it's only 5 steps down so I guess that would be the maximium. it works on mine because it's a split level linear ranch thing.

Found out a little more about the faded green colonial re: orig. asking price, and an offer they had that they rejected. I did a little analysis on $/sq.ft of houses that have sold up there and the going rate is between $188-250 dollars over the past 2 years. These houses were all in mint condition. The house I feel has potential comes in at $200/sq. ft and it needs work - quite a lot of work which kind of reinforces our feeling that it's overpriced and they already dropped it $20,000 from the original asking price. Doing the math you could extrapolate that when renovated it might sell for 240/sq. ft which puts it up at $465,000 which is unlikely as the highest priced sale up there has been $410,000. So Bob and I will go view it Sunday as he hasn't seen it - he may hate it (I'm pretty certain that I am game for more work and renovation projects than him). Also he has some potential change at his work - currently in Manhattan but travelling most of the time but just got offered a job that might have him in the city 3 days/week. So we have to keep that in mind too.

Found a pretty cool design tool for kitchens on ikea.com. You can put in room dimensions and everythign adn spec out a kitchen and it tells you all the stuff you've spec'd and how much it costs. It's kind of fun to get some kitchen ideas that way.