Halfbrown

The builder accepted our offer so it looks like we’re getting the house! Here’s a few tips for you kids out there looking to buy a home:

1. Get a loan pre-approval. You’ll know your price range plus it’ll give you a distinct advantage over someone who does not have an approval, and
2. Look at house in the early or mid-week so you lessen the chances of some other jackass making an offer on the home you want!

So now we have to get this one inspected, get all the paperwork out, etc., but at least we found great place!

With our last offer sadly rejected because of our contingency, we went to look at a new house with a different outlook than we previously had. A little less hopeful and a little more conservative since this is such a buyers market; anything can happen. But after we went through the entire house, we really like the layout much better than the previous home. We also looked at another in the area, but the first one we saw really caught our attention: a nice open floor plan with 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, about 1650 sqft., 2-car garage, and a gas fireplace. We made an offer on it and hopefully this one will turn out much better than the last one!

New construction homes in our price range are getting really limited now, so I hope this one goes through!

Looks like someone else made an offer on the house we liked and the builder took their offer since our deals were essentially the same, only ours has our house-sale contingency and the builder didn’t want to deal with that. Oh, well… I guess it was never meant to be. Now we have to get a move-on and look at more houses ASAP!

So we went to go looking at a new construction house today and it was beautiful! Four bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2-story, great neighborhood and right near a good school for Evan… in short, it seems like a dream home. So we decided to make an offer on the house. Hopefully no one else sneaks an offer in this weekend as well, but we’ll see what happens.

Since our old place is essentially sold (barring any mess ups on their loan approval) theres a concern that we may have to live with family until we find a new house to move into. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with that hassle: putting our stuff into storage, living temporarily somewhere, re-adjusting all of our schedules, etc. But if we have to, we have to.

Our house has officially been on the market for 3 days, and we have 2 offers in and one more being faxed to us! I can’t believe this… this is just so crazy! I’ve never heard of a house with such a quick turn around before, and it’s even shocked our Realtor. Wow! Now we have to sift through the offers and see what looks best. Crazy!

Today was the first day our house was on the market and we received about 4 calls from local Realtors who wanted to show the place. Pretty exciting start for our first home sale! We’re hoping that it goes quickly. Our Realtor said that the quickest home sale she’s seen in recent times took place a week after the house was listed. But realistically, I’m betting that it takes us about 4-6 weeks before we start seeing any serious offers on the house.

The new home purchasing drama continues. Searching for a home, loan pre-approvals, home inspections, finding a buyer, etc. There’s so much to do and not a lot of time to do it.

They say that buying a new home is one of the most stressful times in your life. That’s only half right. Selling your old home and buying a new home at the same time is the real stress test! You’ve got to deal with time constraints with your bank, their bank, everyone’s schedules, who’s buying what, how long people need for contracts to be signed, inspections to be done, contingencies… it’s maddening at times.

I’m a big stickler for documenting code. In-line comments, using doxygen or a tool like it… anything is better than nothing. Anyhow, I was doing a code review earlier today and when I asked why there was no documentation the developer said this to me:

We’ve got so much diagraming, we don’t need to document anything!

I went ahead and sent him back in to document the code.

Since we weren’t very happy with our last Realtor, we decided to find a one on our own instead of taking recommendations. I set up about a half dozen interviews with agents across the county; some by phone, some by email, and a few face to face.

One of the ladies I interviewed seemed to have a really good head on her shoulders as well as a good track record, so we’ve decided to go with her. She was really personable and didn’t try to blow smoke up my ass when we talked about the prospects of selling our current house and also purchasing a new one, so that was a breath of fresh air.

Most Realtors are a lot like car salesmen… and I should know. I’ve sold cars and also took a real estate course a while back. All I needed to do was take the state test and I would have gotten my Realtors license, but by the end of the course I figured it would be just like car sales, but with more running around, so I decided against it as a career move. But taking the course was a good experience and I learned a lot about buying and selling a house.

Anyhow, she wants us to get on the MLS system by Friday, but I wanted to wait until the weekend so that Kimberly and I have time to make the place look really nice. Not that our place is in shambles, but we’d like to do a semi-Spring clean on the place to give it a little extra sparkle. Wish us luck!

Our little family is bigger now and since we’re planning on having more children one day, we’re looking into buying a new home. We’ve been in this house less than two years and we love it, but with interest rates so low we just can’t pass up this opportunity.

I’ve set up an appointment to interview some Realtors and get a pre-approval on a new home loan. Our credit isn’t too shabby, so I’m not real worried about the pre-approval. When we bought our current home, however, our Realtor didn’t have two brain cells that matched, so it was kind of a pain in the ass. This time I don’t want to make the same mistake!

We’re looking to move into a 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath new construction house with at least 1500 sqft. of living space and a 2-car garage. It’ll be quite a move from our current 3 bedroom 1.75 bath just shy of 1000 sqft. house with an over-sized 1-car garage. Cross your fingers, folks!