Getting the ball rolling / sneak peek at interior

Adam got the ball rolling on the house today. We have an appointment with the electrical inspector tomorrow. You can’t get the electricity turned on in a house that has been unoccupied without a wiring inspection, and we need electricity to start working on it. The inspection fee was $40.

We are having a 30-yard roll-off dumpster dropped off tomorrow so we can start clearing the debris out of the basement. The cost for the dumpster is $200, plus $85 per ton. I won’t add the tonnage into the costs, yet, since I don’t know what it’ll come to.

Anyway, blah blah blah, onto what you’re all dying to see: photos! These are just the teaser photos—the blurry photos from the real estate listings.

Doesn’t it look so cute? The nice green lawn makes a difference.

Here it is again. Our driveway is unpaved.

Did I mention we have a half acre lot? I can’t wait to start a garden!

Okay, and now what you’ve all been waiting for: interior photos!

Here is the kitchen.

It looks so much better in the picture than it does in person. The border going around the top of the walls features these creepy Animal Farm-esque bipedal dancing pigs. I can’t have boogeying bovines in my kitchen, so the border’s gotta go. The stove seems pretty nice; it’s electric with flat burners. I’d like to replace the countertop and the sink, but the cupboards are fine, albeit dirty. There’s even a Lazy Susan. I think new handles and some wood polish would bring these cupboards to life.

I would like to tile the space between the cupboards and the countertop with turquoise tile, but I’m not sure if it’d be too much in an otherwise unassuming kitchen. I’m thinking we may have to keep the walls a flat white. Does anyone have any suggestions for what color paint would work for this kitchen’s walls?

Here is the largest bedroom in the house.

The carpeting is no longer in the room, so try to imagine it without it. You can’t see in this picture how stained the walls are. I was thinking of painting this room a neutral oatmeal color or else something bold like olive green. What do you think? I’m not sure yet if we’re going to recarpet the bedrooms or pergo them; I guess it depends on the price. But this room will most likely be our bedroom. The closet is a good size too, with built-in shelving.

So now you’ve seen the inside of our igloo (I say igloo because there’s still no heat on…brr!). I need decorating suggestions! More “before” photos to come, don’t worry.  This weekend we will sally forth into the gloomy perils of The Basement, so you will get to see the real scary stuff soon. ‘Til then!

By the way, the running total is now $1411.

The trouble with banks

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how difficult it can be to deal with banks when buying a foreclosure! My realtor said that banks are just not equipped to be the sellers of homes. And this is why I agree:

When our offer was first accepted, the bank waited a day and a half to get the paperwork over to my realtor (you only have 48 hours to sign a purchase and sale agreement and return it to the seller). That caused me to have to frantically rush out of work to sign papers at the last minute. They insisted on closing in 5 days, which was crazy—barely enough time to get all the legal issues sorted out. So we spent 5 days frantically getting things in order; we asked for an extension and they refused. Then, the evening prior to the day we were supposed to close, they decided to push out the closing for another 2 weeks. Head—> desk.

The bank was a pain throughout the 2 weeks, not answering questions and being generally unhelpful. And then when the closing rolled around, they didn’t send a representative! We had to wait around while our lawyer tried to make the last-minute changes they were insisting on over the phone and via email. The bank was refusing to pay the $200 of back association fees they owed. Eventually they worked it out and they did end up paying up, but we weren’t able to “officially” own the home on that day because we had to wait for the paperwork to be overnighted back and forth.

The day after closing came and went, and I didn’t find out ‘til later that evening that our lawyer had indeed made it to the Registry of Deeds to make everything official. Apparently the seller had asked for another extension to have more time to do paperwork! My lawyer said no, because that is just not normal to do when a closing is half done, but I think it’s sort of appalling that they would ask that. I don’t know why the owners of these foreclosed homes have to drag their feet about selling them. You’d think they’d want to unload the properties.

In the next post: the highly-anticipated interior photos!

More detail on the closing process

I thought I would talk in more detail about the closing process and the costs involved. I plan on keeping a running tally of all the costs involved beyond purchase price so that anyone interested in doing something similar has a realistic idea of what to expect.

I took the whole day off work yesterday, and was busy all day. The first thing we had to do was fetch our key from the lockbox at the house, and then fetch our key for the mail box (the house has an assigned PO Box, since it is in an association).

Normally you do a final walkthrough with your realtor (we had a good experience with Karen Pettenati) before the closing, but we opted to skip that. Then we went down to Bebis Insurance and set up a homeowner’s insurance policy. The cost for a year was $525 and I had to pay a down payment of $120. Then, we went over to Winberg's True Value and made copies of the house keys and the mailbox keys ($13).

Then I brought the original mailbox key back to the Lakeville Carrier Annex, and went to the bank to get a bank check to pay for the house (I love the ladies at Community Bank, by the way!). Then my dad and I headed to the law offices of Wolverton & Himmelfarb to do the closing. Unfortunately the seller decided not to send a representative, so we had to wait around for a couple hours while the attorneys negotiated last-minute alterations to the contract over phone and email.

Closing costs and attorney fees ran me another $633.

After we had signed everything we could sign, we met up with Adam and went to the house for the first time as its owners. A friend of my father’s met us there to give us advice on taping and mudding the walls.

So that brings the running tally of costs above and beyond purchase price to: $1171

We are having a roll-off dumpster dropped off this weekend and then we start cleaning the place out. ‘Til then!