Home Buying Change Of Plans

Well..... First off, Happy Anniversay to J and I.  5 Years ago today we vowed to love each other for better or for worse, through good and bad, and all the rest.  This past year has been tough but we've survived and are finally in a position to be almost credit card debt free, buying a home and starting a family of our own :)

Now, on to the house.

Where to begin.

If you recall, we have been patiently waiting for the purchase of a short sale. It was perfect.  5 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, really good size, fenced backyard, on a cul-de-sac.  It was only on the market for 1 day when we put our offer in on it for the full asking price which was a great deal.

This was November 2, 2011.  Our offer was accepted by the sellers, and while there were a couple of items that we a 'whatever' to (having the pool in the listing, being removed and then being asked if we wanted to buy it separately) we moved forward.
At the end of December we finally had news that the BPO (which is a disinterested 3rd party broker appraisal) which is done by the sellers bank to make sure the offer isn't too low (where they may counter-offer).
BPO came back as roughly the same of what the offer was. Good! Yay! Movement, maybe the bank can just approve it already and we can move on.
Well the bank approved.  Awesome right? Wrong.  There is a second mortgage on the house which also needs to be approved, and the first mortgage isn't going to give much at all to the second one from the original offer.
Ours kicked $1000 towards the second.

The second mortgage was assigned to a collection agency.  And well, they want $11,200 to approve the short sale.
They came to us asking if we would give more money (ie: CASH) to help them get out of their second mortgage.... a mortgage we didn't even know about until February, 3 months into the process.

The sellers moved out of their house and we went to look at it last week.

O M G.  The people were disgusting.  They left the house like they didn't care and got the hell outta dodge.  Items left in rooms, like they picked up in the night and left.  The didn't clean and there was dog hair EVERYWHERE and the carpets were stained and dirty. The appliances were just as dirty, and I cannot believe that they used them like that. The fridge had liquid all left inside, same with the freezer.  The microwave, I opened it and had to close it right away it smelled so bad, there was bread left in the cupboards (which I threw away in case mice decided to move in) and the dishwasher ... I don't know how the dishes got clean.
The best part....they broke the fence to get their shed and hottub out of the backyard.  Like ripped two of the posts out of the concrete in the ground, along with tire tracks in the wet, muddy grass.

I started adding up the money it was going to take to get this house back to what it was like when we put our offer in on it back in November.  The house is 6 years old and looks like it has been lived in for 20.

I needed to take a shower when I got home after being in there.  I was not happy at all.
Not to mention, that living in a small town everybody knows everybody (well, at least so-and-so knows about so-and-so because they heard from someone that somebody did something)and someone who you are friends with tells you that they had no idea they were short selling their home and that how could they be so bad off when they just bought their child a 4wheeler for Christmas?
And your mother stalks the seller on facebook and finds that last year they took 5 vacations, and own 3 Harleys.
Hmmmmmmm......

So, fastforward to February 29.  Our contract with the short sale is at it's last day.  We would either need to extend the offer for another period of time, or let the deal expire.

That morning, I received an automated email message from my realtor for new listings, or changes to one.  A house in the same subdivision, not in the greatest location, with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths with an unfinished basement, bigger backyard, nicer kitchen, better flooring, CLEAN, and priced lower than what we offered for the short sale.
I went to look at it, and discussed with J with him seeing pictures, and trying my best to describe the pros, cons, goods and bads of this house we decided to put an offer in on it.
We let the short sale expire and we are now in a ratified contract with the other house.  Oh did I mention, it's a traditional sale???? And that we should be closing no later than March 28?

It's amazing how quickly things can change in the home buying process and I believe it was fate that this other house came up.

This house is smaller, but I don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing.  And there are things that we can still do to this house to make it ours.  Our first thing is to look at having the basement finished and possibly putting in the bathroom and another bedroom.  The two smaller bedrooms upstairs are really small, and we may end up knocking down the wall between them to make it larger, and with the bedroom downstairs, still keep it 4 bedrooms.  All in good time though :)

So there we have it.  Monday I have to get our documents to the loan officer, who by the way is awesome! I asked her a question by email on the day all of this happened while we were still deciding what to do, and I literally had an answer from her in less than a minute.  We also had an updated pre-approval letter within 10 minutes.  She is definitely going to be receiving a nice thank you from us when all of this is finished :)
Friday is inspection day and I hope that with the age of the home and the reputation of the builder that we won't have too much to worry about.

It will also be nice to save $100 from what we were going to pay a month to what we'll pay now.  We qualify for a VA loan due to J's time in Navy and USAA's home insurance yearly premium is amazing (We're getting over $1000 in discounts from them on the yearly premium).
It's all like a dream! A good one finally.

Weekly Re-Cap

This week was pretty good. With the hubby down at training and getting ready for deployment, I haven't been able to spend any money haha

Sunday 01/30
No Spend!

Monday 01/31
No Spend!

Tuesday 02/01
No Spend!

Wednesday 02/02
Lunch at Work $10

Thursday 02/03
Chipotle $7.98

Friday 02/04
No Spend!

Saturday 02/05
Tonight we are celebrating our anniversary early. Since hubby will be gone for training during our real anniversary, we'll go out for dinner tonight.
Plus, we need to get him some essentials for his deployment.

We got our federal tax refund yesterday of $2123. $1300 of it has already been set aside to pay for a project we've been doing for a year now. We'll finally be able to pay it all off.
That leaves us with $800. That's been moved to a checking account that isn't being used right now, so that we don't just spend it. It will pay for those few things that hubby needs, plus some debt.

Next week, is payday for both J and I. The week after I should be getting my bonus from work. I've figured it should be about $750. The last week of February will also be another pay day for both of us.

The bonus money will also go towards paying debt. I have a Firestone account that is due by March that I don't want to pay the deferred interest on! That will get paid off.

Well, off to spend the day with J, and enjoy our early anniversary :)