Might Be Moving

Hey you kids, get off my lawn! Domicile improvements/items/tips/tricks
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Fairweather Pure
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Might Be Moving

Post by Fairweather Pure »

I love my house. Like, I actually love it. However, the wife and I have come to the conclusion that our family is simply outgrowing the space. We looked at adding on, but with the cost involved we would price our house out of the market in a big way. Also, due to the massive size of the project and time involved, it would be a major interruption in our lives that we would simply like to avoid at this point.

So, it looks like we're moving on. We'll get pre-approved on Monday for a loan and start the process up. My wife has her eye on a home already, but it's a whole lot of house and I have yet to go through it. We would be more than doubling our sq footage (from 1800 to 4200), adding a pool, and also a 2.7 acres of lawn to take care of. Still, it's a damn nice house. We're going to low ball the fuck out of them and see how desperate they are to sell. I think they want out from under it pretty bad. Both of the people lost their jobs, had an estate sale during the summer, and it's currently listed as a "short sale". We're hoping both them and the bank just want to be done with it already. We know what the last low ball bid was. We're going to start off by adding on another 20k to that and go from there.

Kind of exciting, kind of sad. I feel like our home is part of the family and it's hard to let go.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Oh yeah, it has a powered/heated 16x16 off building that's like a single bedroom house. My wife already said if we get the house, I can have it! That would be a pretty sweet man cave!

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Canelek
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Canelek »

That is a lot of house! Mind my asking of list price?

Good luck in the bid!
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Canoe »

I'm in a similar situation Fair - I LOVE my house - but it's 1700 sqft, and with one little one and another one on the way, we need to upgrade (well "need" is strong - we want to upgrade).

We're currently exploring how much adding on would be (we have plenty of room), but I have a feeling, we could just build new somewhere near by for the same price.

We have no need to go to 4200 square feet (that's too much house to take care of for me!), but we're hoping to go from 1700 to 3000 or so - give us all some elbow room!

Good luck with the bid!

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Bubba Grizz
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Bubba Grizz »

Our house is 1100 sqft but it has half the basement finished. I am not in love with our house but I do like our location. We have two kids who are 8 and 4 and sometimes I feel as if we are going to run out of space. The people we bought the house from moved because their two kids were getting older.

Adding on really isn't much of an option though we are thinking of adding an all seasons room. I would really like to move into a bigger house but mainly I'd like to move into a bigger house closer to the stadium. I'd love to be close enough to where people would want to pay me to park on my lawn on game day.

For now that will just have to be a dream. Fair, if I had that small building to myself I doubt my family would ever see me again.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Aabidano »

If you've never had a pool or don't actively use a pool currently, I'd give some serious thought to that part. It's a lot of expense and effort (read huge pain in the ass) for something that in general doesn't get used that much. We've an in ground pool in a screen room attached to the lanai, wife and kids wanted it, having had one before I didn't.

I've seen a few places for sale that even had cash in escrow to fill in the pool if the purchaser didn't want it. Guy across the back filled in his.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Canelek »

Maybe in the south west US where water doesn't occur naturally...

:)
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Bubba Grizz »

Well in Michigan I think he'd get 4 months out of the year where the pool might be used...if it isn't raining.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Canelek »

I'd rather have a hot tub under my new awning. Of course, that 5K will be well out of range by the time my basement is finished.

A pool would be silly around here.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Fairweather Pure »

We were outbid on the above house by another couple. To be totally honest, the wife and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. It's a lot of house. Well, my wife was a little disappointed, but I sure wasn't. If we could've stolen it out from under them, we would had to have taken it of course. IMO, the bid that beat us out was insane. We did like the house, but there were a couple of little things nagging at us that we weren't entirely comfortable with. The house has been vacant for 6 months+. Ever seen "Life Without People"? Yeah, the yard and parts of the house were going to hell real quick. If it would've laid dormant through a Michigan winter, I bet they would've had a real wreck on their hands.

We get about 5 month out of the year for a pool here in Michigan. I grew up with one at my parents and my parents have one at their new house. The hot tub indeed saw far more use. Right now would be the perfect time to get a pool because my kids can use it for the next 10-15yrs. Well, we can too, but it's mainly for the kids and even other family members. I wouldn't do the majority of the pool cleaning stuff myself. I would just continue using the service of the previous owner. I would rather have a lake house TBH. We may look into that next spring. We looked at one earlier and it was creepy as fuck. Like, it felt haunted. Murder/suicide/family slaying type of creepy. Even the Realtor was freaked out from the oppressive feeling in the home. It had been abandoned for over a year, but they left everything in place. Like, the bathrooms still had soap and shampoo in the shower, the kitchen table had a plate and glass, there were dishes in the dishwasher, and the living room sofa had a blanket on it like someone just got up from a nap. They even left up family photos on the walls and stuff.

It's hard out growing your home but finding a new house is somehow proving even harder. We may still do the addition instead, just scale it down a bit. You know, with the current house, we're already 10 years into a 30 year mortgage. The house is filled perfectly with hand picked furniture for every room. If we would've bought that big ass house, we would've been starting all over again except with twice the amount of rooms to fill and an even larger mortgage starting at 30 years again.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Fairweather Pure »

One year later and I had an offer on my house I could not refuse. The guy who sold us this house 6 years ago showed up on my doorstep unannounced last month and offered to to buy the house back for what we owe. He is paying buyer and seller costs too. We were not immune to the housing crash and our house is valued about 35k less than what we owe. He is paying us to walk away from the house. Also, he's paying cash! The stipulation: We have to be out by December 3rd. That is a pretty tall order, giving a family 90 days to find, buy, and move into a new house but we were up to the task. We looked at around 25 houses in 3 weeks and eventually found one we loved in a great neighborhood (location, location, location!). The bid was accepted and we're moving out November 26th. It's all very exciting!

We'll be going from around 1800sq ft to around 3500. Our 2 bedroom, 1 full and 1/2 bath will become a 5 bedroom, 3 full and 1/2 bath home! I have a dedicated media room with a bar area, a beautiful, large office for the wife and I to share, a hobby room, and all sorts of other goodies. My girls will have the run of the upstairs with 2 very large bedrooms, their own full bathroom and a large playroom. The main floor has the kitchen/eating area, living room, dining room, master suite with master bath, main floor laundry, and a 1/2 bath. The basement has a large media room (blackout), a full bath, 2 large bedrooms, and a ton of storage. The house was built in 1995 and had a single owner who used the house about 6 months out of the year so it's like new. The home does not have a pool like we wanted, but we could possibly add one later. The house only needs the rooms painted and we'll be redoing all the flooring eventually (carpet to hardwood and tile). Our immediate concern is painting and buying new furniture to go with the house. I like all my old stuff but it was all kind of bought specifically for the modern, open floor plan of my existing house and so none of it really matches the new house at all.

Right now I have what amounts to a jack n jill bathroom between our bedroom and my kids. It can be kind of a nightmare as you can imagine. At the new house the master bathroom is so big it has a hallway. I'm not even kidding. It runs the length of the bathroom and ends in a walk in closet so large we can put a sofa in the middle. A fucking full sized sofa dude! The bathroom has a standing shower and separate sunken Jacuzzi tub. The toilet has it's own door! Crazy, right? You go into the bathroom, shut the door, then go into the toilet and shut the door. It's fucking madness. I never thought I would be this excited about a bathroom but I am goddammit.

Also, we had an appraisal and the home we're buying is valued over a 1/3rd more than what we got it for! We are extremely happy and fortunate people!

So, we got out from under our house by breaking even and were able to buy a much larger/better house with a 2.8% mortgage. The housing market really is great if you don't have to take a loss on your existing home. First time buyers are spoiled as fuck right now. The house we bought was so far our of our league 6 years ago. It's a buyer's market in my area and we took full advantage of that fact.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Zaelath »

I guess he remembered where he buried all that nazi gold!
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by miir »

We'd love to move into a bigger place, but the real estate market here is just ridiculous.
Our (1400ish sq foot) place is worth $250-300k more than when we bought 7 years ago, but if we wanted to 'upgrade' to around 2k sq foot, we're looking at 7 figures... and that would require some creative financing. :(
Last edited by miir on February 11, 2013, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Winnow »

miir wrote:We'd love to move into a bigger place, but the real estate market here is just ridiculous.
Our (1400ish sq foot) place is worth $250-300k than when we bought 7 years ago, but if we wanted to 'upgrade' to around 2k sq foot, we're looking at 7 figures... and that would require some creative financing. :(
Sell it and move to Arizona like the rest of the Canadians seem to be doing.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Bubba Grizz »

holy crap! Lately we've been watching the DYI channel and seeing shows like "Love it or List it" or "Property Brothers" and they are showing houses that aren't much better than what we have and saying they are worth $300k. That baffles me. I know a lot has to do with where you are located but damn I just can't see that.

We are going through a refinancing right now and our home is now 15-20k less value than it had when we bought it 10 years ago. We bought it using my veterans benefits so we didn't have to have a PMI but now they are saying that we might have to carry it for a year. All depends on the appraisal I guess. Which should be horrible as we didn't upgrade much of anything since we bought the house. It's tough to put together the kind of money to do the renovations we want to do and not make ourselves house poor.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Fairweather Pure »

The whole family has been living here since Dec 7th. I moved in a week earlier with a sleeping bag and $1,000 in paint and supplies. I painted the entire interior of the house in 6 days with the help of a revolving group of 12-15 people. The move was cake, however, we still don't have every single item unpacked due to a round of illness that lasted about 3 weeks for each member of the family. Our main bump in the road was that the furnace is on it's last legs. The home inspector we used really fucked us. We called them up and gave them the report from the Heating and Cooling company and all they said they were legally responsible for was giving us our $450 back from the inspection. Sure enough, reading the fine print, you can't even sue these guys for more than the cost of the inspection. Oh well. A new furnace is around 3.5k and there are around 500$ in rebates to go with it.

The office is set up, media room is done but will be renovated next year with a new floor and I will be hanging the TV and getting a 7.1 surround sound at that time. We decided to hold off on the flooring and instead focus on paying down debt this year. We're also trying to chill on the vacations a bit. We tend to go overboard when it comes to getting out of the house for a weekend trip.

All and all, I am extremely happy with the new house. I don't miss the old house at all like I thought I would. We paid about 1/3rd less than what we were pre-approved for, which I am very happy about. If my wife or I were to lose our job, we could carry on with just one job if we had to. I'm glad we didn't max everything like many would have.

Some more interesting facts we dug up about our buyer:

-He flies a Boeing 777 internationally. He flies around the world several times a week when he is on duty.

-He is rich. Like, really rich. He owns 5 houses around the world, including one in Canada on it's own island.

-He is obsessed with Frank Loyd Wright houses. Every one of his homes shares that aesthetic (including the home we sold back to him).

-He is from Battle Creek, that is why he wanted our house. It is is home town.

-He backed out of a mutimillion dollar home on Lake Michigan in order to buy our house. He paid his Realtor the fee as if she had sold him the other home that he backed out of.

-He had the entire house professionally cleaned, painted, new roof installed, and new windows installed (120+), remotely as he was still living in Florida. He stayed there for the first time about a week ago. This spring he is having the entire yard professionally landscaped, including redoing the rock wall in the back (That alone was around 30k when we looked into it).

Crazy stuff man!

EDIT: He has 2 houses in the US (Michigan and Florida), 1 in Canada, and 2 in Asia somewhere, like The Philippines and Thailand or something like that. If our old home is to go by, he has small single person dwellings that are likely quite cheap but full of the best things money can buy. He is not an extravagant man by any stretch. He is actually very humble and unassuming so I don;t imagine him having mansions all over the world or anything like that.
Last edited by Fairweather Pure on February 12, 2013, 5:42 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by miir »

Winnow wrote:Sell it and move to Arizona like the rest of the Canadians seem to be doing.
You couldn't pay me enough to move to the US. :)
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Re: Might Be Moving

Post by Winnow »

miir wrote:
Winnow wrote:Sell it and move to Arizona like the rest of the Canadians seem to be doing.
You couldn't pay me enough to move to the US. :)
Just like in Canada, there are nice places and bad places to live in the U.S. Generally, anything East of California and West of the Rockies is acceptable (not counting Utah or anything close to the Canadian border)
-He is rich. Like, really rich. He owns 5 other houses around the world, including one in Canada on it's own island.
Canada is all islands. Sometimes houses need to span two islands because the land masses are so tiny due to all of the little puddle lakes!

Not intended to derail the thread. Skip this post!
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