Buying a House - Part III

Our house is sold! And for more than we could have hoped for! $$$CHA-CHING$$$!

Wednesday night was the deadline for all offers. So around 9pm, the agent comes over with a stack of offers under his arm (good!). Turns out we got 12 offers! Unfrickenbelievable! Another high number: we had 55 people schedule appointments to see our house in the 3 days it was showing.

So we start opening up the offers. Some not bad, some barely over asking price. Some with very scary conditions like the following:

Seller guarantees all electrical and plumbing in house. All electrical and plumbing will function correctly for 2 weeks after possesion date.

Uhm, I'm sorry, but WTF? So, months from now (August), we move out, they move in. Middle of August I can get a call saying, sorry, plug socket in north-east corner of basement is no longer working. We want our money back, you can have this POS house. Yeah - even if that was the highest offer (it wasn't) that guy can go take a flying leap off a cliff, into a bed of rusty spikes in a shallow pool of vinegar and salt.

About halfway through the pile we hit gold. An offer that was $25,000 over asking, and $31,000 more than I paid for this house less than 2 years ago! And the best part, that newer, nicer house we already bought? Yeah, we bought that for $3,000 LESS than what I just sold my old house for! There is not even a word that can adequately describe how fricken Snakes on a Mother Fucking Shiny Plane this whole deal is! How often does one upgrade their house, but come out ahead?

I feel like I just robbed two people... the guy who we bought the new house from, and the guy we just sold our house too.

My dad looks at like this. He figures we made $30,000 on our old house, and bought our new house for $30,000 less than market value, which means we are ahead $60,000! Snakes on a Mother Fucking Shiny Plane, man!

With all this extra cash coming this August, me and the finacee will be able to pay off pretty much all our outstanding debt, and leave us with just a mortgage. We are only planning to put 10% down on the new mortgage, the rest of the money will be better off paying off all the other stuff which is at a higher interest rate. No more student loans!

Oh, there was one condition on the good offer on our house, final mortgage approval on the buyer's side. He was pre-approved, but it still needed final approval. Well we had to wait til Friday (today) before we got the call saying final approval was granted! w00t!

I'm so buying lottery tickets today.

:o)

Time to talk some SMAC

Just what exactly is SMAC? I'm not even sure if anybody really even know yet.... maybe you can figure it out? Go check out SMAC now!
:o)

Buying a House - Part II

Well folks, we got the house!!
Ended up paying $5,000 more than we put in our offer, but that is okay, cause that is still a good $20,000 less than that house would have easily sold for on the market! Man, what a blessing - moving into a better house AND getting it at a steal! (We have a home inspection this Monday, so hopefully that won't turn up anything nasty).

We get possession of the house Aug 5th - man that is going to be such a long wait :o(

We already called a daycare and the school in the area. Good news on that end as well, the daycare is literaly 6 houses from the new place, and the school is around a block away. It gets better, this daycare only charges for the days we bring McKenna there, which means we'll be saving around $200/month on daycare - bonus!


Next on the list to do: Sell the current house.

We had an agent come down to the house today. Everything is looking very promising, houses are flying of the shelves around here, and going for a good $20,000 over the asking prices. Seems there are around 8 offers/house in our area - definitely there are people wanting a house here. So, there is a definitely a chance we can sell this current house for the same price we bought the new one at. If that in the case, then this will really help, as we can then buy some new furniture and replace some of our older stuff! Plus pay off some debts we have.

Our house is going into the listings Monday, then will show the following Monday to Wednesday. So, in less then 2 weeks this should be all over with!


I'll tell you something though, cleaning up, repairing this current house to make it more showable sure is taking a ton of my time lately!

:o)

Buying a House Ahead of Schedule!

Well, me and the old ball-and-chain (finaceé) weren't planning on moving for at least a year. However, the other day I get an email from one of my friends who has another friend who needs to sell his house and does not want to go through an agent. For the area and size of this house, the asking price was really good, almost too good. Okay, so we call this guy up and arrange to check the house out.

The house looks to be in pretty good shape, much better than my current house (which could use a redone bathroom, kitchen, etc). The only problems to me seem to be the exterior colour (butt ugly beige and bright blue) and the laminate floor in the living/dining room. That's much less work than I need to do on my current house.

I found out the reason the price of the house is low. Turns out he is going by the estimate of the house's worth from 2004 - two years ago! Uhm, house prices have increased dramatically in this city since then. (To put this in perspective, the friend we have in common, just bought a house in the same area. That house is around 200 square feet smaller, but my friend ended up paying almost $40,000 more than his friend is now asking!). Also, I am thinking there is a fair chance that I can sell my current house for the same price this new house will cost. Considering this new house is in better shape and 30 years newer, and in a better area, well that is TOO GOOD to pass up I think!

So, me and the finaceé did some scrambling. Got pre-approved for the mortgage, met with a lawyer, drew up an offer, and handed the offer in last night. I believe we gave two days to accept the offer, so needless to say the finaceé is going absolutely crazy waiting for the call-back!

Wish us luck folks!
*fingers crossed* :o)