I’m Dreaming of a Bleak Christmas

When my brother and I were kids, we used to sneak up to the attic to secretly unpack Christmas decorations the week before Thanksgiving. As soon as the turkey was put away, we were yanking lights, garlands, and fake trees through the hole in the ceiling, heedless of the shower of plastic pine needles and leftover ornament hooks.

This obsession didn’t fade with adulthood. In fact, for the past five years or so, my brother has decked our family’s home out so much that people specifically seek out our house to drive by. It is so bright, you can see it from space. It’s a bit annoying for the house’s inhabitants, though, because you cannot use the microwave or turn on the light in the downstairs bathroom without either going outside to unplug Christmas lights or blowing a fuse.

This is the family I come from. We are not Scrooges or Grinches (with the possible exception of my grandfather, who insists that Christmas is a bunch of hooey and yet cleaves to holiday traditions with surprising intensity).

So why don’t I have any Christmas spirit this year?

Normally, I would already have forced Dear Hubby to help me select a 10+ foot tree to strap to my tiny sedan. Normally, I would already have dug into the depths of our jam-packed storage unit to find my many boxes of Christmas decorations. Normally, our kitchen would already be coated in flour and powdered sugar and smelling of chocolate, and spice, and everything nice.

None of these things has happened yet. And none of them are likely to happen this year.

We’ve been in the process of (very) slowly packing some of our unnecessary belongings (like my husband’s ridiculously massive collection of books). It just seems sort of stupid to unpack boxes of Christmas decorations at a time when I’m in the process of packing the rest of my belongings.

Add to this the fact that we are newlyweds. We got a lot of wedding gifts not too long ago (and are still working on those Thank You notes -- my apologies to anyone reading this who was generous and kind enough to give us a gift and who has not yet received my thanks). As a result, my kitchen, which was pretty small to begin with, is now overflowing with new appliances and servingware that I have nowhere to store. Try baking dozens upon dozens of cookies in a kitchen with a mere 2 square feet of clear counter space. So not happening.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that it is now early December and yet it is 75 degrees outside. It’s hard to feel Christmasy when you’re wearing t-shirts and flip flops.

The one bright side to my lack of Christmas cheer: Because I’m not going hog-wild on baking and decorating supplies like I usually do, Dear Hubby has agreed to let me loose in the home improvement store after Christmas to buy decorations for next year (when we WILL have a house, dammit!).

Lesson Six: Be Careful What You Wish For

When House #2 was still on the market after 6 weeks, we decided to submit our offer again in hopes that they would see reason. They did. They met us halfway, meaning that we could purchase House #2 if we wanted to.

Now, I feel a little silly saying this after the amount of time I have spent a) wishing desperately for a house, and b) complaining about Fannie Mae’s unwillingness the negotiate the price of this particular house, but...

We decided to walk away.

At first, there was a moment of thrill -- SOMEONE WANTS TO SELL US A HOUSE! OMG!

But then, we started to actually think about our options. At this point, we basically have two houses to choose between: Dream Home and House #2.

I like to make lists. I spend way more time making lists than doing things that are on my various to-do lists. I just like lists. Dunno why.

So we decided to make pro/con lists.

House #2 Pros and Cons

• Huge. I mean GIANT. More rooms than I know what to do with.
• Built in bar. (Okay, in a few years when we have kids this’ll mean a lot less, but for right now...BUILT IN BAR, PEOPLE!)
• Available now. We could actually leave our crappy apartment.
• Did I mention that it’s huge?
• Big backyard that doesn’t look like a jungle.
• Not so great schools.
• Older, slightly decaying neighborhood.
• Local miscreants like to break windows.
• Requires roughly $10K in renovations right off the bat.
• Potential problems that could be revealed in an inspection.
• Tiny kitchen.
• Less possibility for really good return on investment.

Dream Home Pros and Cons

• Good size, but we’ll grow out of it when we reach 2 kids.
• Very well maintained -- new roof, new furnaces, new A/C, new hot water heater.
• Pretty neighborhood.
• Up and coming location.
• Great schools.
• Needs little to no work to be move in ready.
• Already passed inspection.
• Amazing return on investment potential.
• Backyard looks like a jungle. The entire thing pretty much needs to be bulldozed.
• Financing will be a bit of a headache.
• God only knows when Nationstar will approve the sale. We could reach retirement before closing on this house.

We debated, but it was clear which house we really wanted. We don’t want to buy a house just for the sake of buying a house -- we want to buy a house in order to secure the long-term financial security of our future family. That means buying a house that will give us a great return on our investment. That means House #2 -- and its built in bar -- are out.

I wonder if I could build a bar into the Dream Home? Bet I could...

Lesson Five: Fannie Mae Has No Idea How to Price a Home

We got word back on House #2.

We offered them 10% below the list price because the house needs a lot of work. We’d need to do a renovation mortgage.

A basic primer on renovation mortgages: You offer x dollars for the house itself. You do y dollars worth of renovations. After the renovations are done, the house has to appraise for x + y.

With this information in mind, we knew that the house would need to be valued at the amount we paid for it, plus the $7-10K worth of needed renovations. That’s why we offered a lower amount.

Fannie Mae, ever the generous soul, came down from the list price by a whopping $400. (That’s about .3% of the list price.)

We came up a few thousand dollars and countered, including an explanation of the needed repairs. They responded with the same offer, absolutely refusing to come down more.

6 weeks later, the house was still on the market with no offers.

A New Contender and FHA Fails

Since our dream home is taking absolutely forever to come through, we’ve been looking at other houses. Yes, we’re cheating on our dream home. But hey, we can’t afford to rent forever.

We’ve found another contender. House #2 has several hundred extra square feet. A 1980s split level, it makes up for its dated style with a sprawling floor plan that includes 5 potential bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, and an extra den. PLENTY of room to grow (in fact, I’m not even sure I have enough furniture to fill it).

The problem is that House #2 isn’t in the same area. It’s in our less-preferred location: a school district that isn’t as good as the dream home, a neighborhood that’s older and not as well maintained. The neighborhood is also home to a gang of miscreants who seem to get their jollies by throwing rocks through windows, as evidenced by the THREE broken windows in House #2.

The broken windows bring us to another problem: House #2 doesn’t meet FHA standards. In order to get an FHA mortgage -- which is what we need because FHA mortgages let you put down 3.5% instead of 20% -- the house has to meet a list of minimum requirements. Among those requirements is “no broken windows”. Whoops.

Another FHA fail: House #2 has no stove. FHA requires that the house have a functioning stove. Oddly, the house does not need to have a fridge in order to qualify for FHA. For some archaic real estate reason, a fridge is considered personal property, but a stove is considered part of the house. (Personally, I’ve lived without a stove with minimal problems, but I don’t think I could go without a fridge.)

And the final problem: House #2 is a Fannie Mae property, but it’s way overpriced. Considering the amount of work it needs just to meet basic FHA requirements, there’s no way it could possibly appraise for what they’re asking.

So House #2 is massive, but needs work and isn’t in world’s best neighborhood.

The dream home is sizeable, needs very little work, and is in a gorgeous neighborhood.

We still offered on House #2. Will let you know what happens!

Lesson Four: You Know You’re Getting Older When You Get Excited About Furnaces

Despite not having a binding agreement, we went ahead with our home inspection on our dream home. (To recap: This is the short sale that we offered on way back in May; under the belief that we were just days away from having a binding contract, our agent recommended getting the inspection out of the way. This was about a month ago, and we still don’t have a binding contract. See Lesson Three: Nationstar Sucks for more.)

This would be a good time to say that we LOVE our home inspector. He came highly recommended by a friend of ours, and we think he is awesome (especially since he did two home inspections for the price of one because he felt bad for us).

After our first experience with a home inspection (the highlights of which included an overflowing septic tank, an A/C with most of the guts missing, and best of all, MASSIVE termite damage), we approached this one with a jaundiced eye. Sure, the house LOOKED great and it SEEMED to have been well maintained...but it could harbor giant sewer rats inside the walls. Who knows?

Our home inspector, Ray, wasn’t going to go easy on the house. While waiting for our agent to arrive and unlock the doors, he began his inspection of the exterior, carefully (and frequently) pointing out defects -- there’s some siding that will need to be replaced, there’s some moulding that is starting to rot, those windows need to be re-glazed, etc., etc.

But hey, that’s the mark of a good inspector: Someone who will tell you about EVERY TEENY TINY MINOR DEFECT. Sure, the list of things that need to be repaired seems dauntingly long, but 9 out of 10 of those items are simple, DIY-friendly, and (most importantly) cheap.

This trend continued inside the house. I won’t bore you with every minor detail. Instead, let’s hit the highs and lows.

The mousetraps in the kitchen -- admittedly somewhat worrisome. We have three cats, but they’re all giant chickens and can’t even manage to kill bugs never mind mice. I imagine myself coming home one day to find one of my cats cornered by a little mouse.

The many DIY-done-wrong projects -- frustrating, but not overwhelmingly bad. The worst one is the master bathroom. First, they re-tiled the floor. Great, except they tiled around the toilet in such a way that the toilet can’t be moved without ruining a good portion of the floor. And the toilet’s on its last leg. Then they redid the ridiculously TINY shower. Only they didn’t put shower-grade light fixtures in, they added a second shower head that serves no purpose and is disconcertingly close to the non-water resistant light fixture, and the knob to the turn the water on wasn’t installed right, so water runs inside the wall anytime that shower is used.

As a DIY-er, the quality (or lack thereof) of workmanship in these projects makes me sad. I want to track the homeowners down and give them lessons in tiling, laying carpet, and hanging blinds because they failed at each of these projects.

But then there were some highs, too. Best one of all: The house has two furnaces and both are practically brand spanking new. YES!

It was while Dear Hubby and I were dancing for joy upon hearing this news that we both realized...we must be getting older. Think about it: When you were younger, did you ever once give the slightest thought to a furnace? Probably not. You also probably didn’t think about shingles, siding, A/C units, or hot water heaters. Nor did you think about interest rates, loan points, closing costs, escrow, or title insurance.

I’m convinced that buying a house automatically makes you a grown up. Getting married was stressful, but it was stressful in the way that planning a big party is stressful and not in the way that spending your entire life’s savings on four walls and a roof is stressful. Buying a house forces you to think about your future in concrete terms -- how long before we have kids? Will we still have enough room? Will the school district be good enough?

As daunting as the prospect is, we’re ready to grow up. Now we just need that house.

Lesson Three: Nationstar Sucks

I promised to tell you the story of our ridiculously prolonged short sale. Well, gather ‘round my dears. Boy, have I got a story for you.

Back in May, when we first offered on our dream home, we thought that ours would be a normal short sale – by which I mean, frustrating and prolonged, but still predictable. We surely thought we’d be in our new house by now. Instead, 7 months later, we’re not even close.

The homeowners, anxious to get rid of their extra mortgages, leapt at our offer. The next step for any short sale is for the lien holder – or in our case, two lien holders because the homeowners had taken out a second mortgage – to approve the sale price.

The “first” lien holder (basically the primary mortgage lender) was a bank called Aurora. Facing financial troubles, Aurora was more than happy to accept our offer. Then we had to wait for the second lien holder, SLS, to approve the price.

While we waited – VERY patiently – for SLS to approve the price, Aurora got bought out by a third bank, Nationstar. Because SLS is apparently run by a bunch of stupid-heads (that’s right, I said it), they decided that this was a good reason to start the approval process all over again. *Facepalm.*

At first, Nationstar seemed reasonable. They agreed to honor Aurora’s original approval and allow the sale to continue. We breathed a sigh of relief.

But then, Nationstar decided that SLS was taking too long. Aurora’s approval was set to expire at the end of July, and SLS wasn’t coming any closer to approval. Nationstar came back and told us that they would not extend the approval, which meant that if SLS didn’t approve our price by the end of July, Nationstar would start its own approval process from the beginning.

Needless to say, SLS didn’t approve by the end of July. Nationstar went back to the drawing board. Because Nationstar went back to the drawing board, SLS figured it would be really fun for them to start over (AGAIN) as well.

So as of August 1, two and a half months after we placed our offer, we were back to square one.
By this time, I was a mere two months away from the wedding I had been carefully planning for over a year (for anyone who likes wedding stuff, check out this tangential post on our wedding). Wedding planning consumed my every waking thought, so thoughts of the house and the banks took a backseat for a while.

Then, in September, something finally happened: Nationstar came back and said, “We won’t pay closing costs unless you get prequalified through us and use us as your mortgage provider.” We already had a mortgage lender that we were very happy with, but we figured it was worth the sacrifice to get a home that we really loved and we simply couldn’t afford to pay closing costs in addition to paying for a wedding, a down payment, and escrow.

When we called to get prequalified through Nationstar, the representative told us that he had spoken to the underwriters (those mysterious people who approve just about everything relating to purchasing a home), and that he thought we should hear something about the approval within a week or two.

Much rejoicing ensued.

Three days later, the same guy from Nationstar called Dear Hubby and left him a voicemail stating that our house had gone into foreclosure, but he stopped it in time so everything would be okay. This, of course, would mean a further delay in approval, which he was sure we could understand, and so we would hear something within 30 to 45 days.

Shocked, we immediately called our realtor, who called the seller’s realtor, who said that there was ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBLE WAY that the home could have gone into foreclosure. Apparently, the homeowners had been paying BOTH mortgages since the day they moved out, which at that point had been 9 months earlier. What’s more, he checked the county listings and no paperwork had ever been filed to foreclose on the house.

We were left with the very uncomfortable notion that we were dealing with a bank that was not only slow and incompetent (and run by retarded, feces-throwing monkeys), but one that also lied to us.

We returned to the waiting game. In the meantime, we got married (yay!). When we returned from our honeymoon, we contacted our realtor. We had finally decided to heed her advice and go back to house hunting. At this point, 5 months after we placed our offer on the house, home prices had gone up substantially. We found that we would not be able to afford a house that was as big and as pretty as the one we had offered on months earlier. Thoroughly depressed, we waded back into the market anyway.

The universe being what it is, Nationstar finally came back with an update the same day that we placed an offer on a different house. They decided that they wanted us to up our offer by $2,000. Knowing that the area’s prices had increased by a much larger margin, we agreed to the new sale price. At this point, we, our agent, and the seller’s agent all agreed that we were mere days away from having an agreement. We went ahead with a home inspection (which went swimmingly – more on that in another post). We waited.

Nothing happened.

Since then, we’ve been looking for other houses. We’ve seen houses without toilets, houses with bad roofs, houses with cramped floor plans, houses with holes in the walls, houses with rooms that have no windows, houses with broken windows, and houses with wood paneling on every wall.

And so we wait for Nationstar.

Because Nationstar has proven to be so pathetically incompetent, we’ve had second thoughts about using them as our mortgage lender.

Lesson Two: Why “Short Sale” Is a Cruel Misnomer

In May 2012, Dear Hubby and I found the perfect house.

This house checked off almost every box on our wish list. It was spacious, had curb appeal, had a fenced in yard, fell within a realistic budget, seemed well maintained, and wasn’t hideously ugly.

The house had sat on the market for roughly five months because it was slightly over-priced. After two months of fruitless searching, we felt that this house was destined for us – why else would it just be sitting there, waiting for us to come along and snatch it up?

We put in an offer and the homeowners leaped to accept it.

YAY!

Not so fast.

The house was a short sale. For any real estate novices who may not know the term, allow me to enlighten you: “short sale” is the cruelest term in real estate. Short sales are not short. They are long. Very, very long.

A short sale is when the homeowner owes more than the house is worth, can’t afford to keep the house, but wants to avoid a foreclosure. After completing a mountain of paperwork and proving that they are broke, the homeowner gets permission from the bank to sell the house at a loss. The homeowner gets no money – they just get rid of an unwanted house. The money from the sale goes to the bank to satisfy the homeowner’s debt.

As a result, an offer on a short sale must not only be accepted by the homeowner, but also by the bank that will be getting the money from the sale. And because banks are apparently ridiculously stupid, slow, incompetent, and run by a bunch of retarded, feces-throwing monkeys, the process takes absolutely forever. (I apologize to any readers who may work in this industry; my comments are not directed at you personally – or at least, they probably aren’t directed at you personally – but are merely a means of venting an enormous amount of frustration which will be explained in a later post.)

A typical short sale apparently takes 3-6 months to close. We’ve been waiting for almost 7 months and haven’t even gotten the bank to agree to the sale price yet.

SHORT sale. Ha.

Lesson One: HGTV is Full of Crap

I’ve been a longtime fan of shows like House Hunters and Property Virgins.

If you’ve never seen either of these shows, allow me to summarize: A couple meets with a realtor. The realtor shows the couple exactly three homes. The couple debates among the three homes very briefly, submits an offer, and moves into their dream home.

Now, I’m not an idiot (most of the time, anyway), so I’m well aware that “reality” TV bears little resemblance to actual reality. Still, I entered the house hunting experience with somewhat unrealistic expectations, and I blame HGTV for that. They make buying a house look fun.

Guess what? It isn’t.

Those couples on TV look at three houses. In the 9 months that Dear Hubby and I have been house hunting, we have toured at least three dozen houses. After you tour your first dozen homes, the rest begin to blur together into a mass of wood paneling, laminate countertops, and dingy carpeting.

Those couples on TV always find their dream home, complete with every item on their wish list. They almost never have to revise their wish lists. Dear Hubby and I have lowered our standards so far that we are pleasantly surprised when a house has all of the toilets still installed. I’m not kidding: For us, toilets are a bonus.

Those couples on TV never get beat out on their offers. Dear Hubby and I have made so many offers that I’ve almost memorized the wording of a standard Purchase Agreement. We’ve been beat out on most of those offers. (This is why I hate real estate investors. Hate them. Wish I were one, but since I’m not, I hate them. More on investors later.)

Those couples on TV never worry about their home inspection. Dear Hubby and I have so far attended two home inspections. The more memorable of the two involved a house whose problems included: a sinkhole caused by 20 years of poo in the septic tank, termite damage that would require the house to be lifted off the foundation in order to be repaired, water leaking through the kitchen light fixture, an air conditioner missing most of its innards, a garage door about to fall off its tracks, a leaking roof, and two bay windows that were about half a step away from falling off of the side of the house.

HGTV, you’ve failed me.

UPDATE: Dear Hubby, upon reading my anti-HGTV rant, pointed out this lovely piece by Slate, which explains that House Hunters is a total sham and that the houses the people tour often aren't even for sale. Shame, HGTV. Shame. (But not so much shame that I won't still watch my beloved House Crashers!)

Welcome to Making a Home the DIY Way!

After months of house hunting, my new husband and I are at our wits’ end. As a professional blogger, I decided that the best way to cope with the emotional roller coaster that is real estate would be to write about it. And here we are.

At the moment, we are still trying to find our first home. But in time (we hope), this blog will move on from finding a house to turning said house into a home – and we'll be doing the bulk of the work ourselves!

First, perhaps you might like to know a bit about us. Dear Hubby and I just got married this fall. When we first began our house hunt at the beginning of 2012, we had hoped to be moved and settled long before the wedding. Instead, we found ourselves house hunting and wedding planning at the same time.

Take my advice: Do one and then the other; do not ever attempt to accomplish these things simultaneously. Unless, of course, you’re a glutton for punishment, you enjoy consuming huge quantities of antacids, or you have recently won the lottery.