Moving - June 10/10

I watch & enjoy many “real estate” tv shows so I was really looking forward to experiencing my own real estate journey by buying and selling. Well guess what? It is/was SO not as much fun as I was hoping for…

You most know about my disappointment in the selling department. After almost four months, and being near scrapping the whole idea, we finally got an offer on our house. We were listed for $289,900 and the buyers came in at $280,000. We countered at $286,000 & they accepted…a far cry from the $314,900 we started at. Commission pay out will be close to $12,000, we have to pay off our current mortgage & there are all kinds of extra fees involved: lawyer fees, title insurance…to name a few. We still come out ahead on this deal and are putting some of our profit towards paying off our debts and most of it towards a downpayment on a new place.

Shopping for a New Place
With the selling part being so dreadful I was determined to make buying much more enjoyable: change can be exciting and we were finally the buyers in a buyer’s market. We opted to use a realtor to shop, a family friend of mine, Cynthia. One of Tyler’s main stipulations was that we needed to stick to a strict budget so that our monthly mortgage payments could be the same as what we have now. Preferably for Tyler this translated as $265,000 purchase price for a 15 year mortgage, but for me it meant up to $300,000 with a 20 year mortgage. Unfortunately, the Edmonton real estate market is a little stronger than Red Deer’s so that means looking for something older or smaller or both. I thought I was ready to compromise on either older or smaller but I didn’t plan on both for our new home just so that we could all be living together full time. Our first day of house hunting was really, really, really disappointing. We started out in Millet, a small town near Leduc, hoping to find a steal of a deal there. Unfortunately, it seems that wasn’t meant to be cuz everything had a high price tag for what it was. The one place I somewhat was interested in, was a rough looking foreclosure that would need a significant amount of money invested in it right away and it was listed for about $280,000. The only other place we liked was $299,999 and for that price we would really rather be in Leduc. We looked at about 8 places in Millet and mostly it just reiterated to me that I need the community of a larger town.

Onward to Leduc that day we looked at 3 properties. A condo that was within budget but would be a large step down the real estate ladder, a duplex that was TIGHT inside and out, and a new build that was priced high and didn’t meet expectations. At the end of day 1, Tyler and I were both really discouraged. But we picked ourselves up and went back to the drawing board. We started considering other communities other than Leduc too.

Day 2 of shopping involved Dexter, Cynthia and I, several hours and another 8 houses or so in Leduc. I narrowed the options down to two (both in the $290s) and got Tyler to come back that night for a look. In addition, Tyler had been scoping out www.comfree.com and I had arranged to see two homes from there that night. The two homes with Cynthia were a bust for Tyler as they didn’t fully meet our needs (pretty small, needed updated or renos, and in the 290s already). The first comfree one was in Edmonton and was small again. Then we finally saw a house we liked!

It was a 2 bedroom + den (meaning bedroom without closet or door), 1 bath, 3 level split. The kitchen was large, plenty of cupboards and updated. There was a dining room that would accomadate our kitchen table and a nice sized living room. These three rooms were open concept to each other and down in nice paint colors and laminate. Up about 6 stairs to the upper level is the main & only bathroom, master bedroom, 2nd bedroom and den space that is perfect for an office. The bedrooms had nice garden doors on them and everything had new looking flooring, paint and were sized nicely.

Back to the kitchen and down about 6 stairs to the basement/lower level. Right at the base is the laundry (so a full flight of stairs closer than my current laundry), a developed rec room and tons of crawl space storage. Back to the kitchen again, is a door that leads to the very, very large back yard. There’s an older deck, it’s fenced and mostly is just grass. On the other side of the back fence is a grass park that doesn’t have vehicle access so seems very peaceful and quiet (and a perfect secondary space for company if needed).

As you might be able to tell from the description, I basically fell in love with this house. Its different that what we have: smaller, older, less bathrooms…but it just feels like home. A very emotional statement (vs logical).

Tyler, liking the home as much as I am, but ever the logical one, insisted that we needed to look at more houses before we put any offers in on this one. Oh, by the way, this house was listed at $279,000 about $15-20,000 less than anything else I had liked. I’d be editing, if I said that I took Tyler’s stance well. I was very upset that we were waiting, as we do need to be out of our place in less than 6 weeks but I understood where he was coming from too. Long story short, we agreed to look at one more house in Leduc and one in Stony Plain, both from the comfree.com site. The Stony Plain one was nice, but not really a contender. The other Leduc one gave the place from day 2 a run for its money. The second place was bigger (a 4 level split), had 2 bathrooms, 3 “real” bedrooms, beautiful hardwood in the dining room, and bedrooms and had air conditioning. It also had more potential to increase the value of the home internally as it was still pretty dated on the inside. Tyler was pretty excited about the 4 level as he could see the projects he wanted to do there…whereas I could see that the projects would take time and money to do. Both of which Tyler is stingy with LOL

While I could see myself living at either place, my heart was with the 3 level. Not wanting to make a decision based on emotion alone, I tried to come up with some concrete reasons why the 3 level was better than the 4 level.

-4 level asking $286,000 vs 3 level asking $279,000
-3 level lot size 6700 square feet (about 2000 larger than the 4 level): room for future garage as well as present parking of our 5th wheel, also has nice frontage size for a couple vehicles to park in front of our house. quieter street, nice looking neighborhood.
-4 level backs to a busy street which also has the new rec center. nice for access, but not ideal for noise. also on a cul-de-sac which seems good for kids but horrible for parking. no place for the 5th wheel so would have to get rid of it.
-3 level had much larger kitchen, open concept living space and newer finishes
-3 level recently redid shingles & exterior painting, got new hot water tank, and appliances seem newer overall
-3 level in a condition i could live in until we had time and money to personalize it.
-3 level had the perfect space for our office, tucked away so company doesn’t see the mess but still very convenient to living area

When all was said & done, we decided to make an offer on the 3 level on Saturday night. We offered the couple $267,500 on their $279,900 asking price. We were going to come in at $269 or 270 but opted to shave just a few more thousand off. Tyler & I waited in the van while Jen called her husband Dustin (who was seeding) to discuss the offer. She called us back inside with their counter of $271,500. I was pleasantly surprised. I fully expected them to counter at $275 or higher! Since their counter was so close to our original number we were going to offer, we decided to accept their counter offer. However, Jen didn’t want to officially sign the contract until she had her lawyer review it which made me really nervous about the whole process. However, I’m happy to say that as of tonight I have the signed contract here.

Now for the hoop jumping to begin…because we are putting down more than 20% of the mortgage, the bank requires an appraisal to be done on the property at our expense, $300. This is being done tomorrow (Thursday). For our own confidence we are having an inspector come on Friday night to see what needs to be done on the house and if there’ll be any “surprises” there. I’m pretty excited for that, thought it’ll cost about $500, as it’ll make or break our decision and I’m going to take the opportunity to snap a bunch of pictures while I’m there. So we could have our conditions waived as early as Saturday morning or as late as Tuesday afternoon.

I’m really looking forward to everything being official because I am getting more and more attached to the house everyday and it’ll break my heart if it’s serverly flawed (or if the appraisal comes in mega low). [ Oh, if you want to check out some pics its on comfree.com #30072 if I didn't say that already.] We put our moving day as July 10 so it is exactly one month away as I write this.

When this goes through (positive thinking), our realtor will not be getting a commission as she didn’t find us the house. I’m concerned about breaking the news to her, but my dad said “you can’t win ‘em all” in her profession and so far she’s spent just a couple days with us (better than weeks and weeks right?). My dad’s a hard ass though and I’m a wuss so yep, still feeling bad about it. That being said, not so bad that I feel like I have to not buy this place cuz it’s not through her. And Tyler and I have been sort of looking at things thinking that if we had bought this house through a realtor, we may have had to pay ten or twelve thousand more for it as the sellers would need to up the price to net the same. It was a bit nerve racking to wheel and deal ourselves but if it saves us that money, its definitely worth it. Guess we’ll know for sure when the appraisal comes in!

As a test to our decision, the Sunday right after the Saturday night we made our deal with this house, a seemly good comparable showed up on the MLS.com website (realtor listing site). It appeared to be the exact same house plan as the one we had a contract for, though the ad said it had a garage too and was listed for the same asking price of $279,900. To ease our minds and to potentially get decorating ideas, we decided to go look at this place and compare it to our pending home. We are SO glad we did. First off, there was no garage, there’s just ROOM for a garage (which we have in spades). The finishes inside did not compare to ours (it was carpets, lino, etc). The kitchen was smaller, didn’t have a dishwasher, not open to the living room and the cupboards were old and painted (versus new). The appliances looked more dated too. The shingles looked like they needed to be done. The bathroom wasn’t finished as nicely, and it still had a cheater door to the master which we didn’t really like. The bedrooms were in their original 3 formation (vs. 2 + den) which we also didn’t like as much. The washer and dryer were DATED and the basement was finished much more cheaply than ours. Oh, and the door to the backyard was down a few steps which i didn’t like as it’s more closed in. The lot is also smaller and the street isn’t as nice (though it’s only about a block away from our’s). Oh and the hot water tank is not new.

So yeah, soooo not a good as the one we’re in on, yet listed for the same asking price. I asked Tyler after we left, if he liked anything better in that one & he said “the front closet”. Definitely not a deal breaker LOL It made us feel really good about our purchase to have seen that place. Risky, but it paid off.

Hmmm, that about updates you to today I think…so I’d better try to get some sleep so I can deal with another day of paperwork & packing