Well, I, like Darren not that long ago, took one step closer to becoming an adult.
I bought a house.
In theory anyway. We have a verbally accepted offer from the seller for our offer which means that in theory the other five realtors (including… Mindy McPherson.. shudder) can’t get in on the deal. And it was a deal by all accounts. More story below….
Firefly found this last night and contacted our realtor (actually not our realtor, who was being a knob lately, but his father in law in the same office, who we’ve used before as well… but anyway). So I met up with Firelfy and FireflyMom after the gym and we headed up to see it. It’s up in Mission, not that far from Cat5, just a bit down the hill. The house itself is a little two floor tutor style with the english style black and white front. It had pretty much all the things I was looking for. Nice area, nice looking (not the stucco and glass that has marked most of the stuff we’ve looked at so far), with green things (some call them treess) around, giving privacy, but not completely overshadowing the area. A small yard, big enough to mow but not big enough to take two days to mow. It’s right beside a small gurgling creek (moving, so hopefully mosquitoes will be minimul) to provide a nice audio while hanging out in the backyard. Room for a little deck and bbq in the back, and a plum tree and good stuff like that.
It’s an ex-grow op but the renters who were in there were living there so it’s not trashed, but the place isn’t groomed by any means. Basically the yard needs TLC in the form or clippers and rake, and possibly a chainsaw 🙂
The inside of the house, other than having that sweet sweet smell of pot (like I said, it’s an ex-grow op) is not bad. It’s been lived in but the floors are bare and it needs a coat of paint and some finishing in the interior. The basement, encompassing half of the 1800 square feet, is unfinished, but looked like it had room for a good sized LAN party area 🙂
I would have preferred a bit less to do to be able to move in. I know Firefly loves doing work on houses (well, “loves” is probably the wrong word, but it’s not my complete aversion to housework). There is work that has to be done before it’s livable though, the floors are bare like I said which basically means that we don’t have to rip up someone elses idea of a nice carpet or hardwood flooring to replace it with our own. Walls need paint, moldings would look nice, some work on the stucco of the master bedroom ceiling isn’t all that nice, so It Would Be Nice™ to fix that if we’re doing everything else….
So anyway, after walking through it and finding that my stomach didn’t churn with the thought of buying it, and that it was less than most of the other ones we’d looked at, and I liked it more, we talked it over and wrote up an offer right there. The selling realtor was there with us and he took it away and contacted the seller, and I got a message by the time we’d had a bite to eat and gone home that it’d been accepted! Damn fast.
Now the fun stuff happens. Deal with the mortgage broker, come up with the downpayment and the money they want to put in escrow, get paperwork from work, get whatever paperwork needs to be done to actually finalize the deal, deal with home inspection, etc etc etc….
Then the fun of arranging to move out, giving notice, hoping we can not pay all the costs of a new house plus another month of rent here (maybe they’ll be nice and let us go with only half a month payment if we’re out by the 15th? Moving phone, internet, mailing address… oh joy.
And that’s not even thinking about the fun of choosing colors, door/floor styles, etc.
Anyway, very exciting, very scary, will let you know how it goes.