Appraising the Situation

Hey gang.

Well, it's been about a week since the Houghs bought themselves a house, and in that short amount of time Kris has already started to throw herself at an ungodly amount of paperwork and phone calls with various agents working with us (lenders, agents, realtors, etc.) while Yours Truly continues to pack up for the Last Move of the Houghs.

After work this evening, while Mom watched the girls, Kris and I met an inspector over at our soon-to-be home in order to check out the house in a little more detail.  While he poked around and checked things off his To Check Off list, we focused in on details, nooks and crannies, double-checking to see if anything came up amiss.

Fortunately, nothing did.  The inspector was meticulous, and wrote down the smallest of grievances that most folks would have overlooked in a heartbeat (ex. "some of the basement ceiling tiles had cracks in them and could eventually be replaced," "a kitchen cupboard is kinda sticking - a screw needs to be adjusted," etc.)  The only main areas of concern were the gas fireplace, the chimney, and the water heater.

As it turns out, the gas fireplace was fine - it just had to have the pilot light relit because the inspector accidentally shut it off and didn't know how to turn it back on.  The sellers eventually did this, and now the fire place is apparently fine.  Check.

The water heater apparently was missing a sticker that identified when it had last been serviced.  It was clarified by the sellers that the sticker was, in fact, on the water heater and the unit had been serviced a couple months ago and was basically in perfect shape.  Check.

There was a small hairline crack on a couple bricks in the chimney, and would need a sealer applied to it eventually in order to stop future cracking, but it was nothing serious.  The sellers - who are elderly - weren't willing to hire someone to go up a ladder and apply a sealant, when odds were the future buyers - us - could buy a sealant at Home Depot, scale a ladder, and apply it ourselves for free.  Check.

So, all in all, we got, really, really lucky with this purchase.  Our inspector couldn't believe the shape the house was in, and repeated several times that this elderly couple must have just upgraded the hell out of this house on a regular basis to keep it in the shape it's currently in.  Something Kris and I are obviously pretty cool with.

Anyway, here's some pics of our latest walk through of our next home. . .

We totally missed it before, but apparently our house has a sprinkler system built in.  Which is a definite bonus.

We're thinking of putting the piano against this wall in the living room (even has an outlet for a piano lamp), but the flow from the hallway is a concern.

Detail of countertops

Switches in the Study (light for the garage, for the Study, and for the ceiling fan.)  I'm thinking about replacing the switch covers with something badass, but not sure what, yet.

Weird staggering of counter space in the kitchen

From the Dining Room, looking into the Living Room.  I definitely want to put these lights on a Dimmer as soon as possible, if only to rid ourselves of the police interrogation lighting.

(I think they're taking their massive spoon collection with them. . .)

Detail of Study built-in cabinets.  I took this because I'm planning on purchasing and wiring in some under-cabinet lighting to accentuate my African swords.

The now-functional gas fireplace.

Future home of my old world globe bar. . . and maybe someday a desk of some kind.

Basement dividing wall, separating the side room from the main area of the basement (no idea why that carved piece of wood has been affixed to the corner to the right, there.)

Future beer fridge in the basement Storage Room

The future Whatever Room in the basement.  As the only unfinished room in the house (aside from the obvious Storage/Water Heater Room), it was limited in its potential as a workshop.  I'm going to go to war with this room.

I measured this cubby of junk, under the cabinet, and it perfectly fits my wood-faced mini-fridge.  A beer fridge in every room would be very awesome, methinks.

Kris checks out the 'door' to the third bathroom in the basement.

Just barely too small for shelving vinyl, we'll probably use it to house photo albums, video game guides, songbooks, board games, and other crap like that that needs shelf space, but isn't quite worthy of the Study upstairs. . .

Juuust too short for vinyl.

Kris wants to renovate this closet in the basement into a built-in office.

Lighting in the Storage Room

Tupperware pull-out thingies in the kitchen.  Nearly every lower-level cabinets have these, which Kris is on the fence with.

Sea foam walls down the hallway as well.  That'll have to go.

We didn't notice this the first time we were there, but the front door has stained glass in it.  I'm not sure if that's vines or leaves or what.  Something plant-ish.  This door also has encased blinds that are installed between the layers of glass (identical to the sliding doors in the Study), which are super nice.

The Living Room. There's no overhead fixtures, so we'll have to spring for a few lamps down the road. . .

Kris and the inspector

Seriously.  This bush is getting a frickin' haircut when we move in.

Two months from now, this place is going to look a hell of a lot different.  No more sea foam walls, no more doilies, no more owls.  . . . well, maybe a doily or two.  We'll see.

- Brian

The Offer

Hi, Nation.

Hey, remember when I said we were moving?  Back up to Michigan?  Well, a big step of that process, in addition to the packing and moving and getting jobs and all that crap, is the selling of our current house.  The housing market has improved somewhat since when we bought the house three years ago, so we were optimistic about selling our home relatively quickly.

But we had NO idea just how quickly it would go.

We hired a realtor named Ken, who came highly recommended from one of Kris' church friends and happens to be one of Central Florida's Top 100 realtors, and he came over and snooped out our house.  Now, we're not slobs or anything, but we didn't realize our house was as well-maintained and clean as it was - Ken looked around, asked some questions about the property, and informed us that our house was in amazing shape and we should be able to get what we wanted for it no problem at all.  This was indeed good news.

See, three years ago the couple that owned the home (the only people to ever live in the home, by the way - they built it) put it on the market at a pre-appraisal rate their selling agent recommended.  We checked out the home, loved it, and put in an offer for that was about two grand less than what they were asking for, as that was all we could get from our lender at the time (despite our excellent credit rating, we had no money for a deposit, having not all that much saved up at the time, thank you very much second child.)  Despite our lower offer, the elderly couple liked us, thanks to our 'adorable' little kids who we brought along with us to view the property, and accepted our offer.  When the property appraisal came in, it valued the house a little less than their initial offer, which is what we ended up paying for it.

(Hooray.)

Don't ask me what the hell's up with our tree.  I won't miss it.

Fast forward three years to Present Day.  In the couple years we've owned the joint, we've paid off about $7,000 on it, and it's valued at over thirty grand more than what it was when we bought it.  Ken decided to list it at that price, based on comparable properties in the area, and see what happens.  We figured we'd generate a few bites in the first weekend, but none of us - Ken included - dreamed of the amount of frenzy our modest, little house would generate.

The ad went up Thursday morning, and within hours Kris (who was the contact number for the property) started receiving phone calls from buying agents like crazy.  She showed the house to one set of buyers that morning, before she went to work, and scheduled six showings for the next day, during that hour between when she had to drop the kids off of school and when she went to work.  Then, on Saturday (when Yours Truly was dealing with alligators, six-year-olds, and oppressive Florida sun with the Daisies, if you'll be so good as to recall), our house was bombarded with a steady stream of buyers.  

Long story short, we received over a dozen offers - some generous, others comically awful - and lost count of how many people viewed our house, but by Sunday morning we had narrowed down all of our offers and interested parties to two buyers.  Of these two, one ended up being cleared right away, and we pounced on it.

And so, dear readers, we have now begun the so-called 'closing' process once again, this time on the other side of the bargaining table.  We'll be walking away from this whole house-thing with a considerable nest egg, having nothing more than the dumb luck of buying a house when the market sucked, taking care of the place, and selling it back when the market was awesome.

To say we're happy about this turn of events would be. . . well, one hell of an understatement.

As our good friend John "Hannibal" Smith used to say. . .

- Brian