I asked my Realtor why we were trying to get the seller to give us a response right away. She said it was because we don’t want to be held up in finding a house by having this deal hang in limbo for however long it takes them, and that we could just start looking again.

I told my Realtor that I won’t be able to resume the hunt until early-June at the earliest because I’m going to be really busy with stuff going on at work. I asked her if there was any harm in letting them take their time, and she said “no”. So, we’ll going to just let them take their time to do whatever they need to do, and if in the end they decide not to sell, thats fine. I have nothing else to do during this time except work.

This would be the best decision in my mind because I’ve already spent the money on the inspections and stuff, and may as well give the sellers time to realize they made a bad investment. Either I say no now, and wait till June. Or, I give them till June and then resume when I have more free time.

My part is done. I’m waiting on the sellers. I have nothing else I really need to do which means I can focus on work.

Of course this means that I could be in escrow for who knows how long. They have till June.

By the end of the day, it should be for sure that I’m not getting the house. The sellers want to dispute part of the appraisal, but if unsuccessful in justifying the higher price, it’s likely the house will fall out of escrow. They’ve already said that they’re not going to sell for the price the house appraised at. My Realtor gave them until the end of today to make a final decision, as now everything is halted and waiting on them.

So, later today/tonight I’ll talk to my Realtor and find out what the decision is. Either way, I’m not going to be house-hunting tomorrow – I’ll put that on hold for a while since I’ve already lost about $900 on this house that the sellers have far to much confidence in.

The appraisal was for $25,000 less than the offer of $250,000. The Seller doesn’t want to sell for $225,000. They challenge the validity of the appraisal that I got and we’re trying to get them to do a second appraisal (they pay for it this time).

It’s really a tough spot for them. They bought it at $196k thinking they could turn around and sell it and make $50k. However, they’ll only be making about $29k if they sell it to someone who actually cares about appraisal values (which is the majority of people I think). So, their house isn’t worth as much as they thought and they refuse to believe it.

So, my Realtor is looking in to seeing if FHA will accept a second appraisal, and if so, will ask the sellers if they want to pay for a second appraisal.

If the first appraisal was accurate and they won’t sell, then that’s it and I find something else.

They listed the house the same day they bought it (with cash) and they didn’t have it appraised. You would think they would have appraised it to see how much it was worth, but I guess they could just get some sucker buyer to pay for the appraisal instead, since they could always back out if it gets a low appraisal.

I’m almost over it.

We haven’t heard back from the seller or the selling agent since they were notified of the Appraisal Report results yesterday morning. My realtor is going to try to convince them to sell for that lower price, however the decision is ultimately up to them. They probably won’t be able to sell for the price they want, when compared to the selling price of other houses around there.

If this falls through, I’ll be out about $1000 bucks from the home inspection and appraisal report. Home hunting is sure expensive.

I’ll of course update twitter or this website as soon as I hear anything.

I have a feeling its going to be a long long weekend.

Escrow is supposed to close in 5 days.

The Appraisal Report came in today while I was on my way home from work. It’s $25,000 less than my offer, which means they have to lower the price or they can go with someone else (others made offers).

I don’t really know what else to say now. Let’s just hope my spit-balling from the previous post is true. Otherwise, I’m just assuming I won’t get the house.

[update]

Talked to my Realtor. She said she’s going to call the seller tomorrow and “re-negotiate” the contract, and hope they agree to take the 10% off of my asking price which would make it purchasable for me.

If this falls through, I’m going to be taking some time off of this home buying crap.

Appraisal should be in on Wednesday. Escrow closes middle of next week. I’m pretty freakin’ nervous.

We drove by last night on the way back from Hemet. The neighborhood looked nice and quiet.

There are still a few things (at least that I’m aware of) that need to be complete in the next 11 days.

The appraisal is supposed to happen. Again, my last worry was that the house wasn’t going to appraise for enough.

However, there’s another thing that I’m worrying about, and it sort-of conflicts with my other worry (I kind of with they would just cancel each other out so I’d have no worry).

FHA (the type of loan I have) used to not allow you to purchase a home using FHA if the house you’re purchasing was last sold less than 90 days ago. The restrictions have since been lifted, allowing you to purchase a house which was last sold less than 90 days ago, as long as it is not for more than 20% of the last purchase price.

That is a little bit of a problem for me.

The house in escrow was last purchased on February 25th of this year for $196,000, and I’m purchasing it at the end of this month for $250,000. That is WELL over 20% (well, actually it’s about 25%).

There is an exception to the rule if the seller can justify the house being sold for the price it is, which they should be able to since they bought it under market value at a trustee’s sale. They listed it the same day they bought it for 25% more. So, now I may not be able to get the loan because it’s over that 20%, and if its appraised for under 20%, then they may go with a higher offer from a type of loan that will fund that amount since mine won’t.

However, I’m going to spitball some possibilities.

First, when I received the counter-offer, they wanted to make sure escrow closed by the end of this month. They seem eager to get the property off their hands. Also, when they sent me the counter-offer, they were fully aware of my loan and the situation. See this clip from the email when they sent me the counter-offer:

**THIS PROPERTY WAS PURCHASED AT TRUSTEE’S SALE, PLEASE VERIFY THAT BUYERS PREFERRED LENDER DOES NOT ENFORCE A SPECIFIC SEASONING PERIOD FROM THE DATE OF THE MOST RECENT DEED TRANSFER. WHILE THE FHA 90 DAY SEASONING RULE WAS SUSPENDED AS OF 2/1/2010 IT APPEARS THAT MANY LENDERS ARE STILL REQUIRING A SEASONING PERIOD OR HAVE OTHER RULES IN PLACE THAT MAY AFFECT YOUR BUYER’S ABILITY TO GET FHA FINANCING FOR THIS PROPERTY**

So, the seller is aware of the rules. They should also be aware that they can’t sell it for over 20% of the last sell price. Why would they be wasting their time with me unless they were sure they could sell to me?

I have a feeling that once the appraisal comes back, that if it appraises high and they’re able to justify the amount, that they’ll keep the selling price at $250k and that will be a done deal. However, if it appraises low, I think that they’ll accept the appraisal price since they’re eager to end the transaction quickly, and wouldn’t be able to find someone else to end escrow by the end of the month.

However, I’m already accepting the fact that I’m not going to get the house, and that it’ll be another 6 months or so because I have a chance to own a house.

(end of spitballing)

The appraisal was done on Thursday, and the results should be around sometime next week.

It’s getting down to the last week and a half. I’m extremely nervous. Lucky, I have a wonderful family who is encouraging me, and a loving girlfriend who is keeping me calm, and I also have work to distract me from thinking about it all throughout the day.

Yesterday I filled out a bunch of papers for a loan from a bank in New Jersey. I think they’re the bank who is going to end up funding the loan. Printed up over 80 pages (half of which had to be signed and returned), and mailed the required papers back to them. It was quite an adventure just getting them mailed (and seemed like the world was working against me). The first post office I went to was down the street from where I lived in Culver City. I showed up and their power was out. Their postage kiosk was down. Since I was going to overnight the papers, I needed to get the $20 stamp. I went to the next post office, and they had just closed (it was 5:15pm). A lady told me to go to one off of Venice and Motor in Culver City, so I rushed over there (as much as one could rush in Friday 5pm traffic in LA) and was able to print the stamp and get it mailed off. It should be in their office in NJ on Monday.

I also received the Home Owners Association documents for the place. All, 200+ pages. A lot of legal stuff and showing their budget, blah blah blah. Rules about what you can and can not do with your place. I guess no matter how old you get, and what you buy, you always have to have someone policing you. Well, I guess I could live on a farm or something and do what I want, but who wants to live on a farm? Not this guy. Anyway, I pretty much would have to get permission to do any add-ons with the place and stuff like that.

I also had to inform the Escrow company to add my current apartment number to the address they have on file for me. The UPS guy trying to deliver said documents had been here the past 3 days trying to find out which apartment number I lived in because they forgot to put it down. Lucky nothing else was sent from Escrow (I called and verified this).

So, that’s the home update for now.

Well, okay – maybe I will need to use words.

Buying a house is a roller coaster.

I’ve been somewhat kinda focused the past couple years on buying a house. It wasn’t until last year where I REALLY put more effort in to it. I saved most of my overtime in to a separate account and stashed it away. After I was done with all the hectic work weeks, I began the office house-hunt (after a little time off to travel to the East Coast and a day trip to Chicago for deep dish pizza) in late-September. I was really delusional  to think that it would be a somewhat quick process. I figured with this economy being the way everyone says it is (like I actually pay attention to that stuff) that I would be able to snatch something up quickly.

Well, it turns out that the market is actually very competitive, with people paying cash to buy up these houses while they’re down so they can turn a profit.

Back in December, I made my first offer on a house, and it was eventually turned down because they didn’t want to do an FHA loan. This really frustrated me because the house was a good deal, and they actually accepted an offer lower than mine to avoid my type of loan. It got me really frustrated. I took the couple weeks for the holidays off from looking and just relaxed and tried not to let this stress me out much. Nothing good was really popping up for sale in Long Beach, and it seemed like all the houses that were showing up were houses that I felt I would have to pay a lot to “settle” for, and that’s not really how I wanted to spend my money.

I expanded my search to include some areas more inland. I expanded to the Inland Empire and Riverside County. I got a listing and decided that I would drive through the neighborhood and view the houses that were: 1) Built during MY lifetime and 2) Looked like decent houses. I lowered my standards in what area I was looking to buy, but raised my standards on what houses I would consider.

Jenna and I took a day and drove by all the houses on a list that we received from my Realtor. Most of the houses were pretty good. Jenna helped me narrow the list down to about 5 houses, and I made offers on the first 2. They were pretty decent houses. One of them looked like it was in really good shape and it was my number 1 choice. The second one looked like it would need a little work (new garage door, and new painting on the inside) – this one was my second choice. After a while I soft of changed my mind on the priority on which house I would want. I decided that I wanted to have the second choice as my first choice, because it would allow me to fix the things up how I wanted them. The old first choice was in such a good shape, that I couldn’t justify changing anything.

I made offers on both houses. Both offers were a bit over the asking price (one of them 10% more than asking price).

Waiting to hear on the status of these offers is the most painful thing. You submit your offer and then you wait. You try and go on with your life doing other things, but all you can do is think about the house and whats going to happen. I was really sure that I was going to get my “new” first choice house cause it had been on the market for almost 3 months when I made the offer, and they were going to make a decision only a couple days after I submitted my offer. Well, I ended up finding out first that I didn’t get the second choice, and then I found out I didn’t get the first choice. Again, my offers were not accepted because someone else offered cash.

This really frustrated me because we had put in the effort to actually go and scope out these neighborhoods, and I didn’t want to spend all the effort and time investing a thought in to where I’m potentially planning to spend the next 30 years living. Long term plans kept changing over and over in my head and it was really beginning to take a toll on me. I couldn’t sleep at night and felt myself getting negative about other aspects of my life.

I would look through lists of houses that I would be sent from the Realtor and just wasn’t so motivated to actually look at the houses. So, I changed my strategy around. I decided that if a house looked good, I would just blindly make an offer on the house. I started throwing out offers left and right. I don’t really remember how many offers I had made, but I just started throwing them out all over the place (on some decent houses – I wasn’t about to lower my standards further).

This one Saturday towards the end of last month, I got a notice that I had a counter-offer on one house and that another house just needed me to contact their lender to make sure I qualified. This lifted my spirits a little bit. Both offers that I had made were for just the asking price. I didn’t really care if I got them or not when I made the offer, but was just going to keep swinging without even really looking.

I called the sellers lender and was quickly pre-qualified. They said they would get back to me. The Counter-Offer was received by me. The counter offer was to state that they wanted to have Escrow closed by March 31st. I made sure this was okay with my lender and then signed the counter-offer and faxed back.

That weekend, Jenna and I took a trip to drive by these houses. They looked pretty good and were in decent neighborhoods. One of the houses stood out, and I really liked it a lot. The other house had a pool, but was a little older. Even though it had a pool, I still like the newer one. I’m not much of a swimmer.

I found out that they accepted one of my offers (the older one with the pool) on that Monday. I called my Realtor and we decided to actually take a look at the house the next day. So, we met up in the area the next day and got a tour of the house. It was nice and the layout was pretty decent. I was really excited though, because the other house’s agent (the newer one which I had received the previous counter-0ffer on) had called my Realtor and told her they were interested in accepting my offer and wanted to know if I was still interested. This was of course my first choice of the two, so I was pretty excited. We decided to go take a look at that house.

We showed up to the house, which was empty. Took a look inside, and I really liked it (dare I say that I loved it, for fear of having it ripped away like the others). I took this video of the inside (sorry for all the motion) [link to YouTube page]:

I really like this house and told my Realtor that I liked both, but that this one held a substantial amount of favor in my eyes. I told her that I would be really happy to end up in that one.

I was driving to work and called in to a meeting. While I was dialed in to that meeting, my Realtor calls. I put the meeting on hold and answer, and she tells me that they accepted my offer! I was so happy. I couldn’t wait until the meeting was over so I could call my mom and tell her. While the meeting was going on, I was texting Jenna and updating my twitter to let everyone know that things were looking up. Finally I was able to call my mom and let her know.

Since then I’ve been signing lots of papers and worrying about things like hoping the house appraises for what I offered, or else I won’t be able to get it. As time goes on, I feel a little more confident that the house will appraise for my offered amount. We should hopefully find out on this sometime this week. Yesterday I found out that there were going to be higher closing costs than what I was originally anticipating. I’m still working on that one to see why that jumped up all of a sudden, but feel a little better about it.

Hopefully everything will be taken care of and I won’t be completely broke when this is done (although I’m pretty much expecting myself to be). I’m still hoping and praying that everything works out. Escrow is supposed to close in the next 15 days. It’s going to be a long 15 days. The offer was accepted on the 2nd of this month, and it’s only the 15th, but it seems like it’s been a few months at least. I’ve had a hard time sleeping again because I’m nervous something is going to go wrong. I’m so hopeful, but then also so scared at the same time. I’ve never experienced stress like this before, or all the emotions that come with home buying. I feel like I’ll come out of this stronger, but all the time spent in this seems to be killing me at the same time. In the end, I hear it’ll all be worth it. Let’s hope that holds true.

It’s been a while since I’ve used this website for anything useful, other than showing a single picture and some out-of-date links to connect with me on other sites. I start so many blogs and never update them. This is my website though, so maybe I’ll feel more obligated.