The Big Meeting Chpt#4

Talk about going to a meeting unprepared.

When we were invited to a meeting with the builder and agents about the possibility of having the builder build a home and THEN having us buy it, we thought it was a meet and greet to talk about the POSSIBILITY of this happening.

What we failed to understand was that in THEIR eyes, it was a done deal. it was the perfetc storm for both of us. They build a house that we want and we buy it.

For us we were still in the “let’s not think too far ahead and get excited” stage.

We arrived, shook hands with Kevin the dealer (hands were the size of a newspaper, HUGE) and then things really got rolling.

We knew the builder had five lots he wanted to build on and we had picked one out already. As luck would have it, IT WAS AVAILABLE!!

The original house (I will call it 522) was snatched away from us was a north facing house, this lot would give us a south facing back (which is the main face of the house). I seems most new homes are now orientated so that the main “looking out” side of the house is the back with garage in front.

We already had a floor plan picked out from 522 but this lot was sloping so the plans would call for a walk-out basement with the deck, now on the “second” story.

Instead of the house on the left we would now have the house on the right. We were told it will not cost that much more and the builder (who knows what price range we are in, said it was not a concern).

So with what we thought were the important decisions over, we relaxed a little. Little knowing the onslaught of questions about to come.

The builder said that if weather cooperated it would take a little over four months to build and all we needed was a small down payment. Just something so we could not just back out willy nilly.

THEN, he starts to ask us questions on “tweaks” to the house. It was decided we all go over the original house and discuss any changes.

Let me tell you right now. THIS is the danger point as you guys on the HGTV forum pointed out. So many little things that seem small but if you add an extra little 30 upgrades. CHING CHING!! $$$$$

We started with small upgrades knowing that some would have to be cut later. The builder Kevin was awesome. He told us things he would have done differently and offered suggestions and how much “about” this and that would be. We both loved his style.

In the beginning we wanted THAT house. But we felt having the EXACT house of someone else might be creepy! SO . . . . .

The "dining room" was six feet wide. He said on paper it looked good but in real life it could be cramped. This mirrored exactly what DJ had been saying also. Expand it four feet. CHING!

He could also add an extra window on each side making it into a sun room. CHING!

The living room was perfect as was the fireplace.

There is a small wall which separates the living room from the kitchen. We felt that since you NEVER want to have furniture up against the wall if you have the space (all or our funiture is agains the wall at the moment) this wall could be useful if we made the top wider by an inch or so. It would be more of a shelf.

Doors were talked about and we decided to keep the cheaper doors for now as this was an expense that we could pass over.

Of course now that we had a walk-out basement we needed a finished room down there, 10-15K CHING! Look at it this way. We would “sooner or later” want to finish off the basement right? Why not spend the money now and spread the cost out over 30 years.

We decided that the three car garage (two car and storage) should be flipped with the main two car slot in the middle and the storage on the outside. Also add a door to the outside from the storage garage.

As you can see , 522 has the two-car on the outside.

We also thought the front of the original house was sort of bland and when we mentioned this Kevin (builder) pointed to the house across the street which was the same house but the front was tweaked with a small front porch and columns. Notice they have the two car on the inside. We thought the middle column could be taken out as it sort of cluttered things up a little.

Speaking of columns. it would be nice to have partial brick as this house has. CHING!

Back inside the house we were discussing the windows and we liked the “grids” (for lack of another word) on the front side windows but we thought we would rather have no grid on the main windows. (Hey, saving $20 a window there!!)

Also the entire house would be flipped backwards. Garages should always be on the uphill side of the house so that we were flipping.

There were all sorts of other things to think about. To many to discuss here from kitchen cabinets, to lowering the ceiling one foot, to bath tubs, to two sinks and light fixtures, carpeting, counter tops, type of wood on the deck and dozens of other things?

And remember, we THOUGHT we were their just to see if this was possible.!!! Not to actually make decisions!! LOL

Luckily he was just mentioning EVERYTHING because he said many people are surprised at just how many things there are to decide on. The details did not need to be decided on now, he was just getting our brains going.

SO! He took our basic foundation ideas and we are going to have another meeting the first week of January to start to iron things out.

My God – this IS happening!

Now we have to sell OUR house!!

Talk to ya next time!

A Christmas Miracle Chpt #3

In my last blog “Back to The Drawing Board” I talked about the house we really wanted getting sold before we were ready to act.

At that point we were thinking of “Why not build?”

So we started to think more seriously about finding a lot and building. (remember when our TV died and I was looking at new TV's she kept saying WHY STOP THERE!! We now have a big TV LOL)

Then, One day later, as if our agent was in our minds. A Christmas Miracle happened.

She calls and asked if we wanted the same home design in the same area except on a different lot.

WHAT?? OF COURSE.

It seems the builder of the house we wanted has five more lots and wants to start one or two more houses in January with a finish date April or May.

Then the kicker is perhaps we would like some input. When Marcia (agent) mention that she had somebody that wanted that design the building was all excited. This would help BOTH sides We can have a house build with input but not have to put money out right away.

This works good for everybody.

The builder knows there is somebody that will buy the house and we can have input into tweaks. Also we would have a few more months to prepare OUR house.

So – Wednesday we’ll have a meeting so see what is up.

DJ and I would like the same house design except the lot we THINK we can get is slopping. The good news is it is a southern facing lot (as opposed the a northern face lot on the original.

The one problem is that the lot is sloping which would mean the basement would be a walk out basement.

So – on our wish list is a finished basement ($15,000??? more?) Also if you look at the photo of the living room we would like to have the windows tweaked a little, Perhaps some sort of rounded window above what is already there. ??

And as our last tweak the original house had a “ok” deck. This deck out be much larger since it would be basically the second story deck with a stairs leading down to the ground. Why not have a BIG deck! HOW MUCH CAN THAT COST (insert evil laugh).

So many questions and we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We will know more the 27th.

Stay tuned.

Rod and DJ

Back To The Drawing Board. Chpt #2

The house we were excited about has been taken off the market and we're back to the drawing board. It’s not the end, it's the beginning. It goes to show you that when you find a house you have to act on it. Just because it was on the market for four months does not mean it will be there for another four months.

This last weekend we put in three new light fixtures and a new three season door. Getting things done one step at a time. The big picture is over whelming but one step at a time.

Here is a hint. When you buy a new house. Write down all the things you want to fix or replace. You probably will not do them and six months later you will be used to the old things.

Then 10 years later you will be selling your house and THEN you will make the fix's and go "wow, I wish I would have down this ten years ago when I could have enjoyed the new look".

It's easy to get lazy and just "live with it". Sooner or later you will need to fix the stuff that is not "right". Do it before you "can live with it".

A few things we learned about when getting pre-approved for the loan.

PMI is Private Mortgage Insurance. If your down payment is less than 20% of the sales price or appraised value (in other words, the LTV or loan to value ratio should be 80% or less). Then you must play the PMI. For us it was going to be ABOUT $70 a month.

Once the principle reach's 80% then (I presume) the PMI is no longer needed.

Also The Bridge Loan. This is a EXPENSIVE loan if you are going to need to cover two mortgages. It's a very expensive loan and if you can do ANYTHING not to take it, DO IT!

On a side note - since the house we WERE looking at had no tree's we were looking at landscaping and tree's in particular. This website will be very useful for tree's and plants.

Landscape Plants for the Upper MidWest.

Why! Why! Why! Chpt #1

The above question is what many people are asking us. WHY WHY WHY do you want to move. You have the perfect set-up. You have a house inside the city limits, four blocks away from a major shopping center, one half mile away from the country and you are right next to a nature preserve with deer, raccoons, hawks, ground hogs, and more birds then you can count on BOTH hands (you can tell most of our friends are city people).

The house is in pretty good condition for a 40 year old house, it gets plenty of shade in the summer and plenty of southern sunlight in the winter. WHAT could be possibly wrong.

What is wrong is that we did not pick the house. It is not OUR house, it will always be DJ’s parents house. The key word is “house”. It’s a house, it’s not a “home”. That my friend, is a big difference indeed.

When Mel and Betty (DJ’s parents) decided they no longer wanted to take care of the upkeep of their home they asked us if we could help them out and move into their home on a Land Contract.

Hard to turn down.

So we bit the bullet and moved from a 1700 sq ft apartment to a 1350 sq ft house as described above. It seemed like the smart thing to do.

This was six years ago and after the excitement wore off DJ started thinking this was not HER home, it was her parents home, and I was thinking that while I really liked WHERE the house was, I was not “in-love” with the house.

We were both fighting these feelings. We decided to make upgrades.

But the feelings were not going away.

We would go on random drives and always slow down when a “For Sale” sign was spotted . . . . . .NOT that we were looking.

Until one day, a bright sunny day in a small town, a new development, sitting quietly by itself (at the moment) was a spec* house. One of the smaller house’s in this new area. And it was sitting just far enough from the 18th fairway of a nice golf course to not be in REAL harms way (more on this in later blogs) for golf balls.

We stopped and circled the house looking in the windows. I went into the surrounding area looking for golf balls, how close were they coming. Hmmmmmmm!

We looked at each other with glints in our eyes and smiled. It did not look exciting from the outside, but inside had some real signs of character.

Two weeks later.

We had now been shown 6 houses for sale and we always comes back to the original. Nothing was even remotely close. It had to be a pretty special house to draw our attention (Nature Preserve and all that)

Our agent (which we had known before) looked at our house to assess what we could get for it and told us a few things we could fix up here and there, nothing much (to HER). I mean, yea – painting four rooms is only one sentence right? Until you actually have to do it. Or replacing a door to the three season porch is just one more sentence, until you have to take it off when the temperature IS ZERO!

When time comes to put our house up we should ask $214,000. There are NO houses for sale in our area. Nobody ever moves, nada. Very very stable. Our agent drove around and said “There are no house’s for sale ANYWHERE around here.

Our neighbors house sold for 2,000 under asked and it took 10 days, three years ago. She also said that even though the media talks about a slow down in housing, it’s not slow at all here in Madison.

The house we are looking at is $229,000, down from $249,000.

ANYWAY!

It is Saturday, December 16th and we were just approved this morning for a loan and we’re a little pumped up at the moment (besides having colds).

THAT is the background.

My goal for this blog is to show the ups and downs of what a common “never done this before” person goes through when buying AND selling his first house. Do we know what we are doing? Heck no. We are trying to stay one step ahead and are constantly reading other forums such is the HGTV message boards and books and sucking as much info as we can. We are trying to be human sponges (which is actually the way my head feels like at this moment, I hate colds).

But I’m sure as you all know – experience is the true way to learn. It’s always something!

I welcome ANY comments and hints from anybody that reads this.

Our next step now that we have been approved is we‘re going to have two more views of the hopefully new house. One with just DJ and I. Looking deep into the house, I mean REALLY look at it. We will make a decision at that point. Then a week later we’re having my brother, an architect who was featured in House Beautiful a few years ago (sorry, for some reason I felt this had to be said, I mean, where else can I say it casually, not at bowling or anything) take a look at it so we can see his point of view.

If it’s a go we will put in a bid.

And then all hell will break loose, the true adventure begins!

So – I have more to say but that is enough for the moment.

Hang on, stay tuned and pray for us!

Rod and DJ.

*1.speculative house are what builders build to get things going in a new area.
or
*2. a new house built to sell and make money