Posts Tagged ‘Moving’

We’re getting there…

Monday, May 12th, 2014

I’ve wanted to actually sit down and post for well over a month and a half, but the joy of homeownership when the place is constantly a wreck tends to take the priority.  So, since it’s been so long, I now don’t even know where to start.

If you follow me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook you’d know that we did actually close on the house and get the keys, it happened on March 14th instead of March 12th but it happened. Since then it’s been a mad-dash of “Get This”, “Fix This”, “Clean This”, followed by INSERT MORE COFFEE!!  The house was so freaking disgusting after we got here on closing day. It took me over a week of shampooing carpets before I was even remotely comfortable with moving in my stuff over here. The bathrooms were scrubbed a few times with A LOT of bleach, the garage was full of crap that the previous owners should have gotten rid of and it fucking cost us money to do it, money we didn’t have because they completely fucking screwed us during this entire god damn process.  After going through this house we’ve easily determined that these people were low-life scum who had absolutely no idea what broom was, let alone any advanced cleaning accessory such as a SPONGE. The layers of slime that were scrubbed off of the showers is still mind-blowing to me… to the point that I’m now scrubbing the shower down almost every day just to make sure there’s none of their residue making an appearance – my O.C.D. in this house is possibly 10 times worse than it’s ever been before.  I swear to god if they were ever dumb enough to step foot on this property I’d probably shove a few of the shot-gun shells found in our crawl space straight up their asses.

In the past month we’ve gotten the bare essentials taken care of on the house, the rest are all happening this summer. We’ve got a huge couch and a big comfy chair (for Sean) in the Den. We recently picked up a gorgeous 6-person cherry dining table to start building up the dining room, we bought a small kitchen table the first week so we had somewhere to eat, picked up some bar stools on clearance from Lowes that were a really good find. George and Sean have been busy with some of the maintenance around the house so that we can be in a livable environment, and the only major thing left to accomplish this upcoming summer is to get the roof patched up.  If we had a little more wiggle room with the bank account this summer we’d have a company come in to take down a few of the over-grown (and dying) trees in the back yard so we can start putting in posts for a fence.  Why? Cause the neighbor behind us has the most annoying dog in the world and I’d rather it no longer have the ability to see us whenever we pass by one of our windows, and I want a damn pool so a fence must come first!

Sean’s been really happy down in his basement office, I was able to spend some time getting my office painted and setup so the only thing at this point that’s missing is a new desk but I’m making due with the folding table for now, it’s holding the iMac up pretty well, as well as the side monitor so I think I’ll be OK for a little while. Of course I’m going to need to get my Windows desktop setup at some point for cross-browser testing but I’ll continue to utilize the free services for now.  I could really care less if IE6 supports something anyway, if you’re still using IE6 then you shouldn’t have a computer to begin with.

The one big draw-back for life recently is the fact that my cell-phone is pretty much useless. I dropped it on the day of closing and the back popped off, it’s currently being held together with electrical tape and the battery only holds a charge for about 30-60 minutes. I literally have to keep it on the charger unless I’m talking on it, in which case I have to make sure there’s a charger close by.  Now, the battery was shit before I broke the back off of the phone, it’s just gotten much worse over time so I’m going to assume that replacing it should help to solve a few of my problems.  Thankfully, even though the Droid-4 was made in a way that Verizon would have to change the battery for you, I was able to break the piece off that Verizon has the tool for and I don’t need to waste money by bringing anything to them.  So, I’m gonna spend $20 on Amazon for a replacement and hopefully be good to go. I’m not due for an upgrade, but with the cost of cellphones I’d rather salvage the one I have for as long as humanly possible.  There’s no point in my spending $200 to upgrade every two years when I can just pick up a $20 battery that should hopefully give me at least 12 months without any problems.

BUT – the one thing we’re doing to help with the problem is turning our Double Play with Comcast into a Triple Play. Sean didn’t really see the point in having a house phone in the beginning, but now that he’s seeing how many problems I’m having with my phone and seeing how often I need to be ON the phone because my entire family and all of my friends live in NY he’s realizing that the house phone will be an essential part of life here for me. So tonight while we were in Staples we found an AT&T phone system for like $100 that included like 5 phones which would pretty much cover every room in the house, Sean figured it would be cheaper on Amazon so we walked away from it, but I saw saw it for like $130 on Amazon so I guess I’ll be heading back to Staples… when will men learn to listen?

In any event, I have an inbox full of crap to take care of and eyelids that are not willing to cooperate, so it’s time to increase my caffeine and while that’s working through my system it’s time to walk the dog. If it weren’t for her snoring next to me, I honestly would have completely forgotten it’s time for her to head around the block.

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Posted in Bella, Daily, Fiance, Home Ownership, Randomage, Stressed, Work | Comments Closed

What do you want now… my first born?

Monday, March 3rd, 2014

Sean and I have decided that once everything is finalized with this sale, we’ll never be purchasing another home. The process for buying a home is the most time consuming, stress inducing, bull shit situation I’ve ever been in. So many people, for the longest time, were just handed mortgages and then boom – economy crashed and there’s foreclosures everywhere. Now? The process is pretty much to the point where on top of the last 5 years of your financing, they’ll take your first born to seal the deal.

Originally we were going to close on Feb 28th, we were set to close on this date but then some random tax stuff came up for our co-signer, and it was then going to be delayed for another week. We were super happy to find out that we’d be closing on March 7th, then we come to find out that this random tax stuff would require information from the IRS that we’re having A LOT of trouble getting our hands on.  So, we went ahead and submitted an addendum to the sale contract and we’re basically sitting tight until the bank and the IRS can get everything worked out.

The issue? The owners are freaking morons. Their realtor was never given the green light that we’d be 100% closing on the 28th, so they decided that they would be smart to just up and move out the day before the original scheduled closing. For people who couldn’t afford to fix ANYTHING in the house, it surprised me that they actually had the money for a down payment on a new house. So while the house is actually in their sons name, they decided to just walk away. Now their realtor (their daughter-in-law) has gone as far as requesting that we move into the house before everything is finalized with the bank and pay them $1700 a month in rent plus utilities. ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Why the hell would we do something so stupid? Based on the issues we’re dealing with theirs no guarantee that we’ll EVER close on this house – so why would I tap into my down payment just to make sure that they can cover their own mortgage because her in-laws are dicks? Their financial problems are not my problems, or my fault.

For the past two months we’ve completely been at the mercy of the bank, who’s asked us to provide things to them that I feel are more of an invasion of privacy than something that’s pertains to the loan. Every deposit to the bank accounts, they want to know why it was made and a copy of the checks. They demanded all of the pages of the statements so they can see how our money is spent, and I’m sorry but the fact that I don’t feel like cooking on some nights shouldn’t be their business – how dare you question how often I purchase a pizza. They originally requested deposits, withdrawals aren’t their fucking business.

I’ve had to write a letter to the bank to inform them that Sean has access to his own bank account because it’s a joint account. I’ve had to write letters advising why W2’s are different than Taxes filed when they’re incapable of reading the “Other Assets” section of the tax returns (What the fuck is the point of even providing you WITH the tax returns if I’m just going to have to tell you to READ them!?) We’ve given them year to date income for the past two years, they’re demanding that we file our 2013 (even though by LAW I don’t have to do that until April and I haven’t received all of my 1099’s anyway so I’m going to wind up filing an extension).

We’ve had to dig out the paperwork for the lease for Sean’s mothers house, they’re also requesting he be removed from the lease prior to the sale, which is something that’s not gonna happen based on the fact that he’s her sole beneficiary and needs to be on the lease in order to take over the house in the future… so they can go screw off on that one. They also mentioned that divorce paperwork (for a divorce finalized in 1999) may be pertinent to the loan as well.  The level of prying is fucking absurd, I feel more violated by the bank than I ever could by a visit to a gynecologist.

So yea, this is a process I don’t ever want to go through again. It’s a constant up and down, and emotions are running hot because we’re past being anxious and are now downright impatient to just get this over with. When we were originally provided with our new closing date Sean and I went out and I stocked up on everything I could possibly need for my new kitchen. Pots & Pans, Cooking Utensils, Mixing Bows, Bakeware, Cutting Boards, Knives… everything you could need for a kitchen. The only thing we didn’t pick up were plates but that’s because the ‘patterns’ at Walmart are ugly as sin, and set that has service for 4 for $30 seemed extreme to me. I can easily pick up service for 8 from Dollar Tree, and that’s exactly what I’m going to end up doing.

The only upside is the fact that we’ve got a pretty massive storm coming through here over the next few days and since we weren’t moving in this weekend we weren’t going to have to deal with the snow to slow us down. I’m also kind of hoping that something happens at the house that forces them to actually fix it up. Since the contracts aren’t finalized, they’re still the owners so they’re responsible for anything that happens to it until we’ve been handed the keys. Is it wrong of me to kind of hope something happens? Of course. BUT that doesn’t mean Mother Nature feels the same way and when you factor sleet, heavy rain, and then about a foot of snow sitting on top of a roof that’s in need of repair… it may wind up saving me the $10,000+ that is required to replace the roof. If they aren’t willing to fix it to finalize the sale of the house… they’re stuck with a $1700 a month mortgage on a house that no one lives in.  Oh freaking well.

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Hopefully it goes a little smoother…

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

Unfortunately the broker I was working with on the mortgage was let go from the company.  Last night I went ahead and sent an email over to his manager explaining my unhappiness with his company, thus-far, and requested to be provided with the information that I’ve been asking for, for quite some time now.  He very quickly responded to my email, which was pretty shocking to me considering I sent it to him about 10pm last night.  He told me that he would be in touch with me this afternoon and able to provide me with all of the information that I’m requesting after he’s had the chance to review our account.

He told me that based on Sean’s income alone, we would be able to borrow enough money to get the house in the price-range we’re looking for.  With the addition of his father as a co-signer, it would increase so we could look into homes on the higher end of our anticipated budget.  With this, the home search is back up and running.  There’s one that I’ve been interested in looking at, Sean and I did a drive-by of it previously but we really want to get in there and poke around. Honestly, as it stands right now I wouldn’t be surprised if we wound up putting in an offer on this house. We both just have a feeling about it, I almost instantly felt like I was ‘home’ as soon as I put my foot into the drive-way. Yes, it needs a lot of landscaping but that’s nothing we can’t handle. And from what I’ve seen on the pictures, the bulk of the inside of the house is purely cosmetic.

So I’ve got a call in to a realtor, my pre-approval in hand, and hopefully this process goes a hell of a lot smoother the second time around.

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Possibly looking up…

Wednesday, October 30th, 2013

So I got a phone call from the realtor today.  She noted that she had absolutely no idea that 21st Mortgage had blacklisted ELS properties.  She was furious, she’d been recommending this company to just about everyone for the past few years.  She threw out their business cards, and gave a few other companies a call for us.  One of them, First Credit Corp, has no bad dealings with ELS and she spoke to one of the main reps, he said that based on the situation he would do everything he possibly could to get us into this house by the initial closing date of November 22nd.

After Sean spoke with him, and I spoke with the realtor about a few things, we went ahead and submitted our application and forwarded over every bit of tax/income information that they could possibly need from us just to get the ball rolling and get everything taken care of as soon as possible, this way no matter what actually happens there is no ‘waiting’ period on our end.  The broker advised us that he will be able to get us a definite YES or NO by tomorrow afternoon.  So we’re back to the waiting game, but at least this time we’re dealing with a company who can actually handle the loan.

I’m still super pissed off at the previous company, but at the same time the broker AND his boss had no idea that this situation was even going on.  I know the realtor was very apologetic, and even the broker knows damn well that his company screwed up on this one, being as all of our information checks out.  I just don’t like being told “We’ll give you whatever money you need to get into a house, and I’ll even fast track any changes to address, but you can’t buy this one”.  It upsets me, and while I know this isn’t our dream home and we’re probably better off looking for something on our own land instead of a co-op/leased land, but that still doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to take the plunge and just get into our own place.

After talking to the realtor today, I wasn’t surprised to hear that even the owner of the home was pissed off too.  I really believe it’s the reason why so many homes are remaining at the “For Sale” status around here, six complexes in this area are ELS properties, and they seem to be the only ones around here that actually have good looking houses for sale. Everything else that I’ve looked at, outside of ELS but in the Rehoboth area were older homes that required a lot of work and time that Sean and I just don’t have.  On average it’s 70 hour weeks, there’s no way in hell we could factor in household maintenance on top of that.

So we’ll see what happens, hopefully tomorrow will wind up being really good news for us.  At this point we’re gonna basically say that if it doesn’t work out – we’re not going to bother to pursue it.  I really hope that isn’t the case, I really want this damn house.

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Un-fucking-believable!

Wednesday, October 30th, 2013

So we’ve been at the mercy of the underwriters for the past week.  We’ve been too patiently waiting to find out what we need to get into this house.  We finally get a phone call from the broker today, he noted that he’s heard from the underwriter and that he’s got both good news and bad news.

The Good News:
We’re pretty much approved for whatever amount of money we need to get into a new home.

The Bad News:
They can not provide us with a loan for any property owned by the property management company.

The broker then went as far as saying “If you can find a house in another complex, I can fast-track everything for you”.

WHAT THE FUCK!?

Supposedly the lending company is currently involved in a lawsuit with the property management company.  The company (ELS) is located pretty much throughout the bulk of America, at least one property in every state from what I saw.  Something happened between 21st-Mortgage and ELS in reference to ELS’s definition of “Rent Justification” and the rest is history.  This happened in the state of California, and even though I believe the suit is actually over with, 21st will not lend out.  Of course they decided to tell us this after they ran Sean’s credit about 10 times.

If you know, damn well, that you’re company is to not have any dealings with another company – shouldn’t that fucking information be dealt with initially? Don’t get someone’s hopes up and then have everything fall through. Where do these people get the right issuing is with a pre-approval and then tell us that we’re fully-100% approved only to pull it off the table as soon as they FINALLY look at the address of the property that we’re taking?

Money and credit scores are 100% not the issue.  We were told that we can buy whatever house we want as long as it it has nothing to do with ELS.  This whole massive bump in the road is completely based on the banks lending policies and all of the lawsuit bull shit.

After this conversation, I started to think. The realtor noted that the previous couple looking to buy the home couldn’t get the financing in order. I’m wondering if they had the same fucking issue considering the realtor seems to recommend the same lending companies.  Then I wondered why so many houses down here are STILL on the market (any home having to do with ELS). Clearly there isn’t a lending company down here that wants anything to do with them, so why should I?

As much as I love this house, I’m starting to wonder if I should just let it go.  It’s going to cost us around $1200 a month just for the mortgage and communities fees, for $1200 a month I can find a house a little further north in Delaware that’s on its own property.  I’ve had a few homes saved on my trulia.com account for a while now, they aren’t selling – and they have some pretty decent features that make them worth-while.  One of which is a home that houses a gorgeous pool in a massive backyard.  The house is only $230,000, and when you factor in down payment and mortgage it works out to about $1300 a month.  The upside is we would own the property, have a pool to enjoy in the summer, and there’s 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths to make sure I have room for everyone.

At this point we just need to figure out how to get out of the contract on this current house when clearly there’s no possible way (unless someone hands us cash for the full cost of the house) for us to even get into it.  I do believe the realtor knew that the lending company wasn’t going to work out and she failed to provide us with this information.  There’s also upcoming issues with the lease agreement with all of the ELS properties because of the recent bills going into law with rent justification.

I know things work out for a reason, and maybe this particular house was just too good to be true.  It’s upsetting to know that we’re more than likely going to lose this house, but hopefully that means it opens a new door (a better door).

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A new kind of market…

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Sean and I have been in Delaware for almost a week now, over the course of the past week we’ve realized how carefree and relaxing it is down here, even though we’ve been working the entire time. (The joy of being a designer… you can work anywhere).  We’ve weighed our pros and cons and realized that living in an apartment in NY would not permit us to build up a savings account, where as purchasing a home in DE would.  How did we figure this? Simple math really.

In order for us to have an apartment in NY (even in Suffolk County – eastern end of Long Island), we would need $1,800 a month before utilities. In order for us to purchase a home in DE, with the mortgage and utilities, it would only come to about $1,200.  The kicker would be that we would also be asking for a mortgage $20,000 above the cost of the home. Why? Because that’s how all of our credit card and loan debts would be paid off. Our outgoing bills would still be approximately $1,800 a month, but now instead of paying credit cards and a personal loan, we’d be paying a mortgage, utilities and the remainder of my auto loan on the truck.  PLUS, being as it’s only the two of us the food bill would drop down, the insurance rates would also drop down.  So while we’d be spending exactly what we’re shelling out now, we’d have more leway with the money and less stresses for the environment being as we’ll OWN the environment and can pretty much do whatever we please.

The help in all of this is the current rush of work coming through, we’re going to assess things and see if they’re still like this six months down the road, if we can maintain our current income (by either staying where we are, or increasing it) we’ll be able to own a home sometime within the next year which then gives us the ability to really start out our lives together.

I’ve taken a few drives through the southern section of DE because I really do love the communities and areas around there.  I also took a drive with Sean’s mom to do a little house hunting as well.  We’ve found two really nice homes in one community off of Route-9 in Lewes, DE. I honestly believe this is the area that I’d like to live in because of the dynamic and the fact that there was plenty of room for Bella to run around in the yard, and the home itself is 1600 sq. ft. which to me is perfect for two people and a 15lb animal.  It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, there’s a 3-season porch which would essentially be my office space, and we’d keep the third bedroom as a guestroom for anyone who comes by.  The home itself is very reasonably priced, there’s a community pool and a rather large pond surrounding one section of the complex that, to me, would mean a lot of excess bugs – but the screened in porch would counteract the problem.  My only gripe about the home itself is the lack of outdoor patio area, but that can easily be accomplished with the permit to attach one to the home.

Either way we’re only looking into things, this isn’t the only home I’m even considering but the community itself has caught my eye, and its distance from the beach helps me gravitate towards it even more.  I think there’s a mortgage in my near future…heh.

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