Category: House stuff

We’ve decided that since we have to either buy or move again, we might as well look into buying a house. $182 000 can get a reasonably decent house around here and if we have to spend that much we might as well make it a house instead of a condo. Plus with a dog on the way a house will probably give us more space to deal with it.

A trip to the bookstore got us armed with a couple of house buying books which we’ve been reading to learn about the process. Quite frankly, it all seems quite overwhelming especially with the time frame we’re looking at (moving by July/August), but I’m sure that’s a sentiment many new home buyers experience.

We’ve already started with combing through various local real-estate sites and checking out MLS listings for areas we want to live in to get an idea of what’s out there and what kind of prices we’ll encounter.

I guess the next thing will be to find a good real estate agent. We’ll have to tap some of our friends that bought homes recently to get recommendations. And then navigating the home mortgage maze…

They want $181 900 for this place as a condo.

$181 900???!!! Holy crap, who’d have thought this place would cost so much!!
The official letter from the new owners of our soon-to-be condo came yesterday, and now we have a tough decision to make. I’m torn over whether we should buy or not. On the one hand, we really love the location and our apartment (despite being leaked on) and would love to stay. Plus we hate moving. On the other hand, the asking price was waaay more than I was expecting. Coming up with a down payment by August will be tough, especially since I’d want to put down at least 20%. Borrowing against my 401k would be an option, but I’m a little hesitant about taking on that much more debt at this point, especially considering the credit card debt I’ve been trying to dig out from under for the past year. Doing some rough calculations putting down at least 11% on a 20 year mortgage would make the mortgage payment about the same as what our rent is now. That would mean I’d also have to factor in that darned PMI as an additional cost.

Well, we have a little bit of time to make a decision. The first thing to do will be to head over to talk to one of the sales reps sometime next week. I’d like to find out what they have planned for the condo-conversion process (new flooring, appliances, other upgrades?) and see if there’s any wiggle room in their price.

I’m stuck here at work while the wife deals with a bit of a crisis with leaking water. Just as I was about to call her to pick me up from work, she calls and says there’s water leaking into our place from the apartment above us. So she’s trying to contain the dripping in buckets while the maintenance guys come over to see about damage control.

And we’re supposed to be buying this place sometime in the future. Maybe we will be moving after all…

Update: Well, the apartment’s a bit of a mess mostly from having to pick everything up off the floor and everything from the kitchen closet being out on the balcony or on the couches and tables. The apartment itself is reasonably ok. A few more water stains on the walls, and rugs were a little bit damp. A couple of the light fixtures need to be emptied out.

On the plus side, parts of the carpet did get a good steam cleaning and deodorizing.

On the down side, the kitchen is a bit of a mess, so our Christmas cookie baking is probably over for the year. And we probably won’t be getting any Christmas cards out this year. We’ll be busy trying to get things cleaned up before heading out of town.

Well, it’s official now. The new owners of our apartment complex bought this place to turn them all into condos. According to the letter found on my door this evening, we should be getting an official letter soon about the conversion process. I’m just hoping that the prices will be reasonable so we’ll be able to scrape together enough dough to buy our unit so we don’t have to move again.

I’m sure this will be an interesting process. Hopefully not a painful one.