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January 7, 2008 11:20 AM
So with the exception of the one sump-pump house I don’t think anything we saw this weekend was a real candidate. So rather than “reverse Walnut Tree” myself I’ve increased my upper limit to $165k. And after getting a bunch of listings from our real estate agent today it seems that was the right choice because the listings I printed out today appear to be much cleaner and a better deal than the ones we’ve already looked at.
Oh and the “reverse Walnut Tree” refers to an episode of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares where the owner of the Walnut Tree restaurant refused to lower his prices to bring in more business. So a reverse of that would be refusing to raise my upper price limit to get a better house.
So we’ll likely do some drive-bys of the properties I’ve printed out today just so we get a feel for them before asking to see the insides. The one property I’m wondering why it’s so cheap because it’s huge, is a newer house, and is considerably less than what I’d expect to pay for that property. If it’s truly that good then I’ll probably make a serious offer on it as quickly as I can. But we have to see it first.
Y’know it’s funny how things shake out of the woodwork. My wife suggested that maybe I should quit my job and just take pictures of real estate for buyers so they can make decisions on the house without having to see it. And previous to this I had a dream that I was doing just that. I had started a business doing just those types of things - taking pictures for both buyers and sellers. So maybe that’s in the future. *shrug* But right now I don’t have time to consider that path.
Time’s a-wasting and we need to get something bought here soon. I’m fairly sure that we could get pre-qualified again without too much trouble but I don’t want to take that chance in this market. The annoying thing is that this whole thing is an inverse proportion problem. The longer we wait the chances of finding the perfect house increase while the chances of us getting finances for that house decrease.
Incredibly annoying from my point of view. We’re creating our own pressure for when we want to move and here is this OTHER pressure on top of everything that we really don’t need.
The worst part about it is that if we do lose our financing then we’re almost certainly renting until we can sock away at least $10k for a down-payment. And that will massively delay our search because renting _eats_ money without really giving anything but a place to live back. That makes it almost an order of magnitude harder to save money in that kind of environment. You become “rent poor” without having the benefit of at least gaining equity. Sucks big-time.
So we’ll try and look at more houses this weekend but since I’m off on Wednesday I’m hoping I’ll have time to do drive-by pictures at the very least. I can maybe get some drive-by pics for my wife and then we can decide if we want to see those houses. Nothing beats an in-person visit but the pictures can at least give an idea of the current curb appeal before we make an actual appointment.
Personally though I’m of the opinion that curb appeal means little as long as the house is solid and/or acceptable to us. I’m willing to live in what some would consider an “ugly” house until we fix things up. Most of what I’d be doing would be in the garage or inside the house anyway so the outside being “ugly” for a while doesn’t bother me.
But then I’m not your average appearance-obsessed humanoid on this planet... ;-)
So with the exception of the one sump-pump house I don’t think anything we saw this weekend was a real candidate. So rather than “reverse Walnut Tree” myself I’ve increased my upper limit to $165k. And after getting a bunch of listings from our real estate agent today it seems that was the right choice because the listings I printed out today appear to be much cleaner and a better deal than the ones we’ve already looked at.
Oh and the “reverse Walnut Tree” refers to an episode of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares where the owner of the Walnut Tree restaurant refused to lower his prices to bring in more business. So a reverse of that would be refusing to raise my upper price limit to get a better house.
So we’ll likely do some drive-bys of the properties I’ve printed out today just so we get a feel for them before asking to see the insides. The one property I’m wondering why it’s so cheap because it’s huge, is a newer house, and is considerably less than what I’d expect to pay for that property. If it’s truly that good then I’ll probably make a serious offer on it as quickly as I can. But we have to see it first.
Y’know it’s funny how things shake out of the woodwork. My wife suggested that maybe I should quit my job and just take pictures of real estate for buyers so they can make decisions on the house without having to see it. And previous to this I had a dream that I was doing just that. I had started a business doing just those types of things - taking pictures for both buyers and sellers. So maybe that’s in the future. *shrug* But right now I don’t have time to consider that path.
Time’s a-wasting and we need to get something bought here soon. I’m fairly sure that we could get pre-qualified again without too much trouble but I don’t want to take that chance in this market. The annoying thing is that this whole thing is an inverse proportion problem. The longer we wait the chances of finding the perfect house increase while the chances of us getting finances for that house decrease.
Incredibly annoying from my point of view. We’re creating our own pressure for when we want to move and here is this OTHER pressure on top of everything that we really don’t need.
The worst part about it is that if we do lose our financing then we’re almost certainly renting until we can sock away at least $10k for a down-payment. And that will massively delay our search because renting _eats_ money without really giving anything but a place to live back. That makes it almost an order of magnitude harder to save money in that kind of environment. You become “rent poor” without having the benefit of at least gaining equity. Sucks big-time.
So we’ll try and look at more houses this weekend but since I’m off on Wednesday I’m hoping I’ll have time to do drive-by pictures at the very least. I can maybe get some drive-by pics for my wife and then we can decide if we want to see those houses. Nothing beats an in-person visit but the pictures can at least give an idea of the current curb appeal before we make an actual appointment.
Personally though I’m of the opinion that curb appeal means little as long as the house is solid and/or acceptable to us. I’m willing to live in what some would consider an “ugly” house until we fix things up. Most of what I’d be doing would be in the garage or inside the house anyway so the outside being “ugly” for a while doesn’t bother me.
But then I’m not your average appearance-obsessed humanoid on this planet... ;-)
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