Wow, sometimes when you come up with an idea things start happening in light speed. Our sudden decision to move is a prefect example. About seven days ago Lisa came home from a rough day of work and informed me she wanted to move to the south side. I wasn't entirely sure she was serious - we love our house and our neighbors - why would we, why should we, move? She had a few reasons but the main one was the kids. I'm not going to go deep into her rationale here but I agreed with her thinking so we decided to look around for a house. Ideally one that would let us downsize, have a smaller (or no) mortgage, and where Lisa could, potentially, stop working (or find a job for a local organization or start our own business). So we had, initially, two requirements;
- In the south side neighborhood
- For $150,000 or less
It turns out there are plenty of houses for sale in the neighborhood but not many in the price range we were interested in. However, after a couple looks around we had settled on one likely candidate. They were asking $160,000 but we figured we could get it for a little less than 150. We walked through a couple times and then took the girls over to see it. Then we decided to make an itemized list of the changes we would have to make (some sooner than others) and their approximate costs as this would give us the true cost of the home.
- New windows
- New fridge
- new dishwasher
- new AC/Heating units
- Reroute some old electrical to a modern circuit box
- remodel/gut the third floor
- fence the yard
- optionally: buy the empty lot next door
- build a shed (immediately)
- build a garage (eventually)
I'm not sure if that is everything we had on the list but it is a good idea of the bigger price tag items. When all was said and done we were looking approximately $130,000 in expenses which pushed our total cost to $280,000. However, we could tackle each of these independently and save up for each so they would have to be on the initial mortgage. All of the other houses in the same price range needed even more work or had no yard at all or had only one bathroom (something we weren't really willing to settle on with three females in the house; and two are fast approaching their teen years), or were in a part of the neighborhood where we would have been surrounded by apartment buildings and parking lots (which basically defeats the point of moving to that part of town).
We were almost ready to make an offer but we wanted to take my dad by to take a look at the house and get his feedback on some of the potential structural issues as well as to give his feedback on the electrical situation. We took him by on Sunday night and he prowled the property with a discerning eye. Once he was done he had this to say to me...
If you had the knowledge and skill to do the work yourself, along with the free time to do it, and $50,000 worth of tools I'd still tell you to run away from that house.
I was a little shocked. My dad does have the time, the skill, and the tools and he said he would never go near it. There is an odd ridge of a hump running down the center of the first floor. He said that is most likely caused by a dramatic shift in the foundation and thus we'd have to get that addressed before we made any other changes to the house. The hump was visible and significant enough where it could trip you as you walked if you weren't paying attention. We were demoralized but had a backup house to look at that ignored our second requirement - but which represented a house that was completely finished and needed no changes what-so-ever moving forward. The price, however, reflects that and is just about what the cheaper house plus repairs would have cost us. We took my dad and Patty and their friend Linda (who is a real estate and house repair expert from back in Oregon) over to check it out.
It is a beautiful home but it's really big. Bigger than our current home. It is the antithesis of downsizing. But it's oddly somehow seems more usable, space-wise, than our current giant house. It has a nice yard and a two car detached garage. The house is pretty much perfect on the inside as far as any of us could tell. There were a couple minor issues with a two pieces of vinyl siding on the rear of the houses addition - but that was it. My dad and Linda were both unable to find anything real to criticize. My dad's comment after walking though was..
If you can afford this one either buy it or don't move.
My step-mother Patty loved the house and was confused as to why we even had a question about buying it. Linda hoped we could afford it but wanted Lisa to really consider the implication that she would have to continue to work if we bought it.
While we made the decision to move quickly we did not make it lightly. We love our current house and it's amazing unobstructed view of the river. It's a peaceful existence that is rare to have here in Huntington. Our house just turned 100 this year but it too is basically brand new and is in need of nothing plus it has two fantastic screened-in porches, a backyard oasis, and a fantastic wrap around balcony. Seriously, we totally love our current house. So we knew, even making the decision, that we would be likely to back out of it if we couldn't find a house we would be happy in - even though we agree our reasons for moving are strong enough to get us to move. Thus, Lisa was already prepared to not stop working if we couldn't find a house we liked. A $280,000 house is nothing more than a mortgage swap for us and a change of address. So we can afford to move to this beautiful brick home on the south-side, Lisa is willing to continue working, but do we want to move and keep her working enough to make an offer?
We talked it over and decided it our reasons were worth the straight swap so we made an offer yesterday contingent on selling our house as we need the equity from our home to put the downpayment plus some extra towards the south-side home. We will hear today how the sellers responded to our initial offer and we'll go from there. Our house also goes on the market today, officially. That means we had a lot of work todo this past weekend (and today and tomorrow) to really get the house ready to show people.
Of course, we picked the hottest weekend of the year to decided to prepare our house for selling. I had a bunch of yard maintenance to take care of and I've finished the majority of it (though I still have about fifteen bags of mulch to spread). I also had to do some minor caulking around the bathrooms where it was looking thin. The biggest issue is thinning out all of our stuff. We've boxed up about 15 boxes of stuff and put about that same amount of large trash bags worth of stuff together for goodwill. We still have to attack the third floor and then clean, clean, clean - but overall I think we're going to get there. We have three jobs we have to outsource to finish it off. We are going to get one room's hardwood floor refinished, we have to have a window pane in the secret room replaced, and we have a couple seems in the drywall that we'd like to have re-seamed (lisa will paint). Once that is done the house will look amazing. The good thing is we do love the house so, if all else fails, we will have gotten these tasks all taken care of and thus the idea to move will have just been a great motivator. Either way, we figure, we win.